RIYADH: The secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council has emphasized the importance of completing a free trade agreement between the UK and the bloc by the end of the year. Jasem Al-Budaiwi made the remarks after meeting Jonathan Reynolds, the UK’s newly appointed trade and business secretary, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Wednesday. The top Gulf official indicated that he sensed a strong interest from Kier Starmer’s new Labour government to complete negotiations for a trade pact. Reynolds, too, expressed a desire to ink a deal before the year is out. Labour, who were elected in a landslide on July 4, pledge to deepen cooperation with the UK’s Gulf partners on issues of security, energy and trade and investment. The UK policy in this respect appears to be unchanged from what the previous Conservative government had sought. Kemi Badenoch, the Reynolds predecessor, wrote in May: “My top priority for 2024 is a UK-GCC free trade deal. An agreement is in all our interests.” “It will mark a new and exciting era of economic partnership between our countries. It will be a new opportunity for both nations to prosper.” Badenoch told Arab News last year: “We are very excited about the GCC-UK free trade agreement. We think it could be groundbreaking and set a precedent for what the GCC does with the rest of the world.” The GCC region is the UK’s seventh-largest export market, with total trade valued at £61.3 billion ($78.29 billion).     The trade corridor between the UK and the Gulf is set to widen over the coming years, regardless of the outcome of this negotiation, according to a Deloitte report last year.