Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Commerce & Industry

28-June-2011 15:34 IST

Anand Sharma Invites New Zealand Partnership in Agro Processing, Infrastructure and Renewable Energy India Pitches for enhanced People to People Contact and Fair Visa Regime

Shri Anand Sharma met the visiting prime Minister of New Zealand Mr. John Key along with the Trade Minister of New Zealand Mr. Tim Groser. The PM is leading a large business delegation in his first visit to India. While delivering his keynote address with the business session with the P M of New Zealand, Shri Sharma said, “India and New Zealand have a longstanding and positive bilateral relationship. The two economies are essentially complementary and there is considerable potential to increase bilateral trade and economic relations. It’s time to give depth and width to our partnership. India is looking forward to partner with New Zealand in Infrastructure sector, agro- food processing, renewable energy and IT. ” The Commerce Minister appreciated the state of art technology being used by dairy industry and renewal energy and asked for bringing such technology to India. He also appreciated New Zealand for taking forward the Doha development round and believing in rule based and rule governed multilateral system.

Shri Sharma later informed that, “We had covered all aspects of bilateral economic engagement, India-New Zealand FTA progress and the state of play in the WTO negotiations. We had also indentified several areas of possible bilateral cooperation-including post harvest technologies/logistic management for agriculture sector, renewable energy sectors including wind and geo-thermal energy, tourism, films (including animation films), pharmaceuticals, education; IT enabled services, financial services and others”.

He further said, “During my business forum meetings in New Zealand, I had stressed India’s core competence in IT related services, pharmaceuticals, film technology, green technologies and others. I had also stressed the complementarities which can be fruitfully enjoyed in sectors such as tourism and education”:

India and New Zealand trade has more than trebled between 2004-05 and 2010-11. In 2010-11, Indian exports to New Zealand were US $ 191.39 million and Indian imports from New Zealand were US $ 621.55 million. Total bilateral trade was thus about US $ 812.94 million and grew 7.83% over the previous year.

Top ten items of India’s exports include parts of engineering goods, mineral fuels, pharmaceutical products, natural or cultured pearls, precious & semi precious stones, items of jewellery set in gold and diamonds, textiles, inorganic chemicals and electrical machinery and equipment. These top ten items explain 68.17% of India’s total exports to New Zealand. And major items of India’s imports are mineral fuels and mineral oils and products of their distillation, wood and articles of wood, dairy products, papers and paperboard, wool, engineering goods, raw hides and skins and leather, iron and steel, electrical machinery and edible fruit and nuts. These top 10 items explain 94.09% of India’s total imports from New Zealand.

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DS/GK

Bilateral trade partnership sought to deepen cooperation in agro processing, infrastructure and renewable energy while easing people movement. India sought expanded economic partnership with New Zealand in agro-processing, infrastructure and renewable energy, advocated a fair visa regime and enhanced people-to-people contact, and identified sectoral cooperation areas-post-harvest technologies, agricultural logistics, wind and geo-thermal energy, dairy, film technology, pharmaceuticals, education, IT-enabled and financial services-while noting progress on the India-New Zealand FTA, support for a rule-based multilateral trading system, and recent bilateral trade composition and growth to justify the outreach.