Pertaining to a funding deadlock between the key Brexit department and the Treasury, the Department for International Trade (DIT) is required to make job cuts “in the low hundreds.” As a result of which hundreds of British officials in charge of promoting trade on the ground in countries like India, China and Brazil will lose jobs. 

Reports suggest that a budget problem has arisen because DIT has not received enough money from the Treasury to fulfill its requirements.  This has led the department to take some cost-cutting measures, including cutting the number of people on the ground to meet its cost of expansion. 

While the department is cutting jobs for officials who work on the ground, UK Trade Minister Liam Fox has hired up to 800 staff to negotiate trade deals after Britain's exit from the European Union (EU). This has led to a dispute between Liam Fox and UK Chancellor, Philip Hammond. 

Currently, the DIT has more than 3,000 staff and has trade promotion employees based in more than 100 countries and in 174 locations. With this strife between Fox and Hammond, up to 10 percent trade promotion jobs can be lost.  

These job cuts due to budget squeeze will undermine the UK government’s aim of building “a global Britain.”

Earlier this year, DIT also launched a new India-UK Trade Partnership, which builds on the recommendations that followed the completion of a Joint Trade Review (JTR) between the two countries. And in one of the recent UK visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the department also unveiled a range of new Indian investments worth more than 1 billion pounds into Britain. 

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