Gulf and British officials meeting in London on Tuesday pressed to complete the procedures needed for the free trade agreement between the Gulf Cooperation Council and the United Kingdom to take effect.
GCC Secretary General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi met Lord Anas Sarwar, the UK minister of state for trade, on the sidelines of the GCC-UK Strategic Dialogue, the GCC General Secretariat said in a statement. They stressed the importance of finishing the steps for the agreement to enter into force.
The deal will remove customs duties on more than 99% of GCC exports to the UK, Albudaiwi said in his opening speech. He said that would help Gulf states raise non-oil exports, particularly of aluminum, fertilizers and manufactured goods.
Raja Al-Marzouqi, the GCC’s chief negotiator, said the agreement could generate about $5 billion a year in economic benefits for the Gulf and up to $4.7 billion a year for the UK, according to Arab News. He forecast bilateral trade growth of 22% by 2050.
Tariffs will be removed on around 93% of UK exports to the GCC, worth an estimated £580 million a year based on existing trade, Arab News reported.
Trade between the GCC states and the UK reached about $70 billion in 2025, making the bloc the UK’s tenth-largest trading partner, Albudaiwi said. Investment assets and liabilities between the two sides totaled about $643 billion in 2024.
Sarwar urged companies to pursue deals without waiting for ratification. “Businesses do not need to wait, we do not need to wait, until we have got through the signature process, the legislative process, and are into the implementation phase,” he told the forum.
Abdulaziz Naser Al-Marzouq, Kuwait’s minister of state for economic affairs and investment and acting minister of commerce and industry, said the GCC was “a gateway to the Eastern Hemisphere of the world through our established trade links with Asia.”
Albudaiwi put the combined gross domestic product of the six GCC states at about $2.4 trillion and their total foreign trade at more than $1.8 trillion.
