New Zealand and Indian trade ministers have resolved to complete their trade negotiations in only 90 days, a top business leader said in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Anish Shah, chief executive of Mahindra Group and President of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said both sides had told him they wanted to move quickly toward a deal.
“In a brief discussion with both commerce and trade ministers yesterday, they both set a goal that this shall be the fastest trade negotiation they have ever done,” he said. “I’m not going to say anything else from that discussion except that this objective was proposed”.
India concluded a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates in just 88 days, while New Zealand’s fastest deal was also with the Emirates and took four months. The previous trade talks between NZ and India ran for five years.
Therese Walsh, the co-chair of the NZ business delegation, said the same subject had been raised at a roundtable of chief executives earlier that day.
“There has been much speculation about the timeframe and there was a suggestion in the room that 90 days would be a good timeframe,” she said.
But she talked down the prospects of having the deal done so quickly, promising to personally fly back to India for the conclusion if it happened within the next three months.
“Notwithstanding the speed and the pace, it is about the commitment to those negotiations and it seems to me that we are very committed on both sides”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the 90-day comment shouldn’t be taken seriously but that both sides had told their teams to move at pace.
“It’ll take as long as it takes. It’s important that we negotiate hard as we can to get the best deal we possibly can for New Zealand," he told reporters.
Trade Minister Todd McClay said the goal set by him and Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal was simply to get the negotiations done as quickly as they can.
The pair agreed to kick off talks sooner than agreed earlier in the week. Negotiators will now have their first formal conversation next week, rather than next month as first announced.
Luxon said this came out of the bilateral discussions on Monday, where the two sides said they didn’t want a “pedestrian process” with the systems “going through the motions”.
McClay said there had not been any precommitments on sticky issues, such as dairy access and increased visa rights, but both sides were confident a deal would be done.
“Minister Goyal and I said to each other, last year, that we shouldn’t go to our leaders to say we wanted to launch unless we were committed to getting done and we believed we could — and that’s the place we reached this Sunday”.
“The other thing we’ve seen from our two leaders, and particularly the Indian system, is that they are not saying, we might get a deal, they are saying they want to get a deal done. And that’s very encouraging,” he said.
$30 billion trade in 2035?
Goyal said in a speech that New Zealand and India should attempt to grow their trade values by a factor of ten over the next decade. That would require growing trade 25% each year, from about $3 billion today to $30 billion in 2035.
New Zealand and India had “complementary economies” which should allow for a mutually beneficial trade deal to be struck quickly, he said.
“There’s hardly anything on which we compete with each other and those few areas of sensitivity we can easily navigate or respect, given the different levels of development and different levels of prosperity that each country has today”.
“You mentioned that if we completed it in 90 days you promised to come back [for another visit], but you have not told us what if we complete it in 60 days,” he asked jokingly.
In his own remarks, Luxon noted New Zealand’s trade relationship with China was 14 times larger than with India, suggesting something like 10x growth could be possible.
It’s not just political leaders who see an opportunity for fast growth. The country manager of a global logistics firm told Interest.co.nz they had recently established an operation in India.
This was in response to a growing manufacturing base in India and demand from customers looking to derisk their supply chains as the United States and China compete in the Indo-Pacific.
The logistics manager said India reminded him of China around 2010 when its manufacturing sector was scaling up rapidly, exports were surging, and its supply chains were becoming more integrated into the global economy.
Two way trade between China and New Zealand has grown from roughly $10 billion that year to over $40 billion today.
9 Comments
No
Watch Luxon cave into increased visa rights. As I mentioned previously another 10,000 odd chefs. I'd increase that to 20k now. The nitty gritty comes later after the necessary high level discussions and if it's anything like Ardern there'll be a full on PR exercise to justify it. I give my due to Andrew Little who I'm confident actually read the last TTPA2? agreement to see if it conformed to some if not all of Labours key requirements for the agreement.
Chefs plus their entire family later
I'd forgotten about that!
Yeah well someone mentioned the other day that Indian babies names are the most numerous on the birth register.
As I have mentioned several times, we are in an Asian area. We will never be Europe or Nth America.
I really think we need to be mindful and maintain good relationship with our Asian neighbours. They will be more important into the future than some far flung country who may claim to defend us.
Anyone here who thinks we will be saved by the USA or whatever needs to realize that there is no strategic value in NZ. They are throwing the EU and basically NATO under the bus!
Pushing Aussie under the Tariff bus while trying to sell then nuclear subs....
I've known this had to happen for years, and have been hollering about it on this site, for nearly 20 of those.
Physics is the underlying problem, and a System predicated on GROWTH, operating within a bounded system (Earth) and which was therefore temporary.
As we press on over the Limits-to-Growth plateau and down the other side (it's a Gaussian / bell-curve if smooth - but it won't be smooth) those things which were supported by discretionary energy, will be abandoned. Necessities - food, water, shelter, non-food energy - will be what we retreat to, as we abandon the rest. But we will squander vast amounts of energy, attempting to kick-start the motorbike (aided and abetted by articles like the above, which don't tell us what the reality is).
Murking that retreat, is the energy-blindness of almost everyone - so they see symptoms and assume they're causes. Illogical, but there you are. There is probably no way out of the human impasse now - Catton reckoned we were too late - Overshoot, 1980 - at 4 billion (too much momentum, and he was right, in hindsight).
The problem is that we will - in reasonably near-time - be reduced to a consumption-rate which doesn't include the above contemplation. At all. Not even close. We'll be living local, growing local, trading close, trust will be back to eyeball (no FOB).
It'll take as long as it takes
So basically you were on a junket to India? Only thing we got out of it is knowing that Luxon is a bowler, not a batter :-D
The terrorist elements India sees in NZ are concerning, given Modi is a strongman. He could tear up any agreements with NZ overnight if he keeps seeing reds under the bed.
That's right blobbles, these so called agreements seem to be a bit of fun at the time thing. Most have no problem in tearing them up when it suits. Old Trump is also encouraging this behavior. It is only going to get worse.
Where is the enforcement? Ha, what a joke. We need to concentrate on the countries that want our stuff. And I believe India does. But don't try and force the dairy thing.
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