New Delhi

Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will meet his British counterpart George Osborne and hold a meeting with institutional investors organised by JP Morgan during his three-day official visit to the UK.

Jaitley, leaving for the UK on Thursday, will also unveil a bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, London on Saturday.

A Finance Ministry statement he will also call on the UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

On March 13, he will hold a bilateral meeting with his British counterpart and Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne. The two will discuss various bilateral and multilateral economic and financial issues.

Both the leaders will also discuss the economic situation in the two countries as well as overall global economic situation, it said.

Jaitley will hold a meeting with the institutional investors organised by JP Morgan. He will also participate in an investors’ meeting organised by UK-India Business Council (UKIBC), FICCI and High Commission of India, London.

He is also scheduled to visit London Stock Exchange (LSE) and will hold a meeting there as well.

The statement said he will later inaugurate a branch of Union Bank of India in London.

The UK Foreign Secretary and Chancellor had earlier announced plans for a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, the inspiration for non-violent civil rights’ movements around the world, to be erected in Parliament Square.

The statue of the ‘Father of the Nation’ will be the 11th Statue to be erected there in Parliament Square standing alongside with world leaders like Britain’s war-time PM Winston Churchill and South African leader Nelson Mandela.

The bronze statue will be the focal point for the commemoration this summer of the 100th Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa to start the struggle for self rule.

Gandhi has a particular connection to London having studied there like so many young and talented Indians who even go there today for studies.

Jaitley will reach India on Sunday morning.

More about the statue

– The sculpture by Philip Jackson, who has also created memorials to Bomber Command, the Gurkhas and the Korean War, shows Gandhi wearing a shawl and traditional dhoti skirt, with his hands clasped. Inspired by photographs of Gandhi on the steps of 10 Downing Street during a visit to London in 1931, the statue portrays him as “a thoughtful, determined, compassionate man”, according to planning documents.

-Mahatma Gandhi’s statue will be set in the corner of Parliament Square next to an existing statue of Nelson Mandela.

-Lord Meghnad Desai, a Labour peer, and his novelist wife Kishwar are trustees of the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust.

-He will be the only Indian in Parliament Square, the only one who has not held high office because the rest of them are Prime Ministers or Presidents.

(Inputs from PTI)