Indian students are welcome: UK

New Delhi: Concerned that there are fewer Indians studying in Britain now, the UK on Monday affirmed that there is no cap on their number and they are more than welcome to pursue education.

UK Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable, who is on India visit, also expressed Britain's keenness to work in the aerospace and SME sectors, while seeking to improve the bilateral trade.

"We really now trying to come back...number of Indian students are actually falling at a time when number of Chinese students are rising rapidly. And we know what the reason is...there was certain perception that the UK was not welcoming. But actually they are welcome and there are no caps on numbers," Cable said at the 9th meeting of India-UK joint Economic & Trade Committee (JETCO). He said that students can also go for employment after graduation.

"I hope that message will get out that we are open and welcoming to Indian students," he added.

Later speaking at an interaction organised by FICCI, Cable said: "More worrying from our point of view, we have seen statistics that show quite a significant decline in the number of Indian students coming to Britain because they feel that they are not welcome".

"So, we have an unusual position now where we are welcoming Indian students. Indian students are declining, and Chinese students rapidly growing. That makes no sense. We really do want to reverse that. We are trying to improve the image of Britain for people coming from India," he said.

Earlier, Britain had scrapped the controversial 3,000-pound visa bond scheme for some "high risk" overseas visitors to the country, including those from India, which was scheduled to be implemented on a pilot scale from November this year.

On trade, the visiting British Minister said: "Trade relations (with India) in particular have declined far too much. British and Indian market trade is far too low. "I think it reflects a neglect from our side. But now there is much more attention, we are getting quite rapid growth on both sides and we are well on track of reaching the objective of doubling trade by 2015."

The two-way trade rose to about USD 16.15 billion in 2012 from USD 12.56 billion in 2010-11. During April 2000 and November 2012, India received FDI worth USD 17 billion from the UK.

"We see a lot of potential (for collaboration) in terms of skills, advanced manufacturing, we want to work with the regional transport aircraft initiative in the aerospace sector. We are now aware that if our trade relations with India have to improve. We have to embrace the small and medium enterprise (SME) companies," Cable said.

At the JETCO event, Cable also said the UK can help India in providing skills training. As per estimates India would need a skilled workforce of 500 million people by 2022, with around 12 million people expected to join the workforce every year.

Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said 500 ITIs have already been set up and 1,500 new ITIs and 5,000 skill development centres will be established in the PPP mode within a year.

India and the UK had established Joint Working Groups in areas like education and skills; advanced manufacturing and engineering and innovation and investment. There are over 700 Indian companies in the UK.

Sharma also said both the sides can increase cooperation in advanced manufacturing space, ranging from aero space, steel industry, power and electronics. UK is the seventh largest exporter to India.

However, India is UK's 18th largest export market worldwide and third largest export market in Asia after China and Japan.

According to Commerce Ministry, India's main exports to United Kingdom include textiles and apparel, fuels, gems and jewellery, ores and machinery while it imports aircraft, spacecraft, fertilisers, ships, oars and floating structures.