LONDON, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- The British team developing global trade arrangements for post-Brexit has grown in just a year to a workforce of more than 3,200, the Department for International Trade (DIT) here said Monday.
DIT was established by Theresa May in July 2016 after she became British prime minister just weeks after the people of Britain voted in a referendum to leave the European Union.
The new department was tasked with supporting British businesses to break into overseas markets, promote Britain as a place to do business and trade with, and negotiate and implement new global trading arrangements as the country leaves the European Union (EU).
"To do this we need to build a new major capability which was not previously required in the UK government," a DIT spokesman said.
"DIT continues to build on our trade capability and the trade policy team has grown significantly from 45 in June 2016," the spokesman added.
DIT said its trade policy team now includes policy and country specialists, as well as expert economic analysts and lawyers and more than 20 lawyers working specifically on trade issues based at DIT.
Recently, the department appointed trade negotiator Crawford Falconer as its chief trade negotiation adviser, one of 58 applicants for the high ranking role.
DIT has already established a series of nine working groups with 15 countries, and high-level dialogues to explore the best ways of progressing trade and investment relationships.
