New Delhi: India and New Zealand on Sunday announced the restoration of negotiations for the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which was postponed in 2015. India and New Zealand launched talks on the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) in April 2010 to promote trade in goods, services and investment. However, negotiations stopped in 2015 after nine round discussions. The Ministry of Commerce said that the two countries are happy to announce a conversation for a broad and mutually beneficial India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) talks.
This announcement is important because New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has arrived in India from 16 March. The ministry announced this after a meeting between Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and New Zealand's Trade and Investment Minister Tod McLe. According to the statement, the purpose of India-New Zealand FTA talks is to achieve balanced results, increasing the supply chain integration and improves market access.
Posting on the social media platform X, Union Minister Piyush Goyal wrote that there is a steady growth in bilateral trade, which will cross one billion dollars during April-January 2025. The purpose of FTA talks is to open new avenues for businesses and consumers, promote mutual growth and prosperity of our countries. According to the Research Institute Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a new challenge fee will be inequality in a fresh talks. The average import duty of New Zealand is only 2.3 percent, while more than half of its duty lines are already a duty-free, which means that Indian goods already have adequate access to its market.
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Conversely, India's average fee is 17.8 percent, which means it will have to make significant cuts, making the traditional FTA less attractive for India. GTRI founder Ajay Srivastava said that when the talks are restored, both countries will have to find common land on these issues to successfully move forward. He said that earlier New Zealand was demanding more access to the dairy market of India, which India opposed to protect their domestic dairy industry, which supports millions of farmers. Srivastava said that at present, India's dairy imports from New Zealand are minimum (about $ 5.7 million), and while India can consider limited imports of price -addicted dairy products, it is against allowing raw dairy imports.
