India FTA 'still a priority'

He told delegates to the recent NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management (NZIPIM) conference that he has personally made three visits to India since National took office late last year.

He was there a few weeks ago where he met his counterpart Piyush Goyal, the Indian Minister of Commerce. McClay says there are challenges when a country the size of NZ with just over five million people tries to deal with a country with a population of 1.4 billion.

"But while there I made the case again that whenever NZ does a trade deal, we are often much smaller than our partner," he says.

"Recent examples of this are the FTAs with the UK and the EU which provide for a high-quality set of rules that gave business on both sides certainty. There are lots of opportunities for NZ in India in the primary and services sectors and there are equally good opportunities for India to do more business in NZ," he says.

McClay says an exciting development has been the decision of India to use NZ wool carpet in its parliament - an example of how trade could further develop. He says, for the last few years, the relationship between India and NZ has been underdone, but the trajectory is changing with the March 2024 visit to India by Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and a planned trade mission to be led by Prime Minister Luxon later this year.

This move to target India is backed by Sir Lockwood Smith, former politician, who says NZ must get a trade deal with India.

Smith says the Government is right in making India a priority to pursue this. He says such a deal may not be big for agriculture, especially the dairy industry, but over time “we can work with their dairy industry to help them build their own dairy industry as a start to open the door for us”.

While it’s now widely accepted that the days of FTAs such as the one with the UK are probably over, Smith says there are other ways that NZ can improve quality access for its exports. He says NZ has huge influence on trade matters globally and our top trade negotiator, Vangelis Vitalis, is highly regarded internationally.