Kemi Badenoch asked the Israeli not-for-profit organisation Startup Nation Central (SUNC) to help identify the obstacles Israeli tech companies face when doing business in the UK.
As she prepares for ongoing negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Israel, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade visited the organisation in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
She met with Giora Shaked, SUNC’s Chief Business Officer, and Yariv Becher, VP Innovation Diplomacy, at the organisation’s Tel Aviv offices for a briefing on their work.
Badenoch discussed ways in which they could help smooth the path towards a new FTA dealing with services, which would complement the already existing arrangements covering goods covered by the agreement made in 1995 with the EU.
“What you’re doing around innovation diplomacy is interesting and probably fits well in terms of the information gathering process of the FTA,” she told them.
“Many people assume that a Free Trade Agreement is just a government to government thing, but actually it starts off with our businesses saying ‘this is what we’d like to do in this country, and these are the problems that we’re having.’”
Kemi Badenoch with Giora Shaked, Chief Business Office (2)
Kemi Badenoch with Giora Shaked, Chief Business Officer at SUNC
SUNC aims to identify technology sectors with high growth potential and assist them by providing business and investment opportunities, data and networking opportunities.
It maintains a comprehensive database of the leading start-ups in Israel, and the has regular two-way communication with those new technology businesses.
“It’s not the minister that decides ‘I want to do something with this country and let’s sign an agreement and take a picture’,” she said.
“An FTA is a problem-solving device. It captures many of the issues which the businesses identify and then wraps it up in a way that we can facilitate more business and more trade.”
Though Badenoch was positive about the meetings she had during her three-day trip to Israel, she said that “on the Israeli side it’s less business-led. So we will come with our business delegation but it’s all government people that are talking and what is being said doesn’t resonate.
“It’s not B2B it’s B2G and it’s not working.”
She proposed that SUNC could convene the businesses it works with in order to find out what can be improved in their business dealings and interactions with the UK, suggesting they establish “what it is that they would like to do with the UK that maybe is difficult or is not possible” in order to help the Israeli government better address those needs in the trade negotiations set to continue later this year.
“Now is the time to figure out what those solutions might be,” she said.
Kemi Badenoch with IYariv Becher, VP Innovation Diplomac IMG 2594
Partners: Kemi Badenoch and SUNC’s Yariv Becher
Describing the discussions she had had with the Israeli government, she explained: “It almost feels like they don’t really have any issues, everything’s fine. It might be a cultural thing. In the UK we’re always finding problems, everything is wrong.”
According to data from SUNC, Israel has over 7,300 start-ups and tech companies, 435 venture capital funds, 135 accelerators and 37 incubators.
The organisation says that despite Israel’s excellence at university level education across nine public universities, there is a gap at primary level which is creating a shortage of human resources for the constantly expanding high tech sector.
SUNC has rich experience of helping Israeli businesses to expand their international reach, especially since the signing of the Abraham Accords which opened up new markets in the Middle East.
Last year, it organised a major innovation conference in Morocco to encourage Israelis and Moroccans to collaborate and innovate on common challenges, including water security, food shortages and human capital challenges.
