New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India has cleared its final hurdle in Parliament, passing its third reading by 93 votes to 29. Trade Minister Todd McClay said Parliament has “overwhelmingly backed” the deal which the Government argued would deliver major gains for Kiwi exporters.
From day one, 57% of New Zealand’s current exports to India will become tariff-free, eventually rising to 82%, with forestry, sheep meat, wool, seafood, horticulture, wine and manuka honey among those benefiting.
But a lot more hides in the agreement than tariffs. It includes the equivalent of 1,667 three-year temporary employment visas for Indian workers each year, capped at 5,000 people at any one time, along with 1,000 working holiday places annually and provisions covering Indian students and post-study work rights.
The deal will also lift the screening threshold for qualifying investment from India in significant New Zealand business assets to $200 million and commits New Zealand to promoting US$20 billion in private-sector investment into India over 15 years. It also included commitments for electronic payments and greater links between the two countries’ payment infrastructure.
That’s significant given the Reserve Bank is currently considering the future of New Zealand’s payment system while continuing work on a possible central bank digital currency. The FTA does not commit New Zealand to a CBDC necessarily, but India, with its extensive digital public infrastructure and Unified Payments Interface, has been held up as a model.
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s major dairy exports to India were largely outside the tariff cuts.
Sovereign NZ co-founder Joshua Riley said the “impossible” trade deal included uncappable visas, horticulture IP transfer and a $36 billion foreign direct investment promise to India. ”At just 2% of the China FTA’s increased trade, the India FTA’s net $390M new trade is a failure with absurd, detrimental concessions,” he said.
NZ First leader Winston Peters has called the deal “neither free nor fair,” arguing New Zealand has made significant concessions without securing enough access for dairy, its biggest export industry.
The FTA will come into force after both countries complete their remaining ratification procedures.
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Who were the 93 traitors?
Oh goodie, what a great deal for India, and all courtesy of the foreign owned NZ Company Church Parliament. No matter what box you tick on their prepared voting form, the NZ Company Church Parliament wins. Lucky us.
🚨 CHRISTOPHER LUXON HAS ECONOMICALLY SABOTAGED NEW ZEALAND EXPORTS.
WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE? 🇳🇿
I’ve worked in New Zealand’s horticulture and agriculture industries, and after reading what our Government actually agreed to in the India FTA, I am fucking furious.
This isn’t just about selling more NZ products to India.
We’ve agreed to help India become better at producing some of the very products WE export.
🥝 Kiwifruit: NZ expertise to help increase Indian production and fruit quality, including planting material, growing techniques, post-harvest knowledge and Centres of Excellence.
🍎 Apples: improving Indian rootstock, yields and post-harvest performance, alongside modern premium cultivars and growing systems.
🍯 Honey: technology transfer, research, testing, breeding expertise and NZ beekeeping practices to help develop India’s honey industry.
🐄 Livestock & dairy: dairying research, animal husbandry, animal-health expertise and even cooperation involving germplasm and breeding material.
🐟 Fisheries: fisheries expertise and deep-sea fishing technologies.
🌲 Forestry: research, harvesting, utilisation and technical capacity-building.
ARE YOU F#c KIDDING ME?
Luxon is a true w@nker.
This is nothing every other NZ government hasn’t done to the detriment of the taxpayer and NZ business since the Lange government. That includes everyone’s golden boy, Peters.
Those horizontal and vertical red lines on the flag are actually very consequential and relevant.
It is the Templar Cross representing an inbred hereditary power base descended from Charlemagne and Rabbi Makir (and Rabbi Makir married Charlemagne’s aunt).
It is why you do not have a true democracy, only a fake democracy.
It is why the FTA with India slides through despite the will of the people.
A joint or separate capitialist/ communist takeover of all resources via UN Agenda 21?
Literally a National disgrace. No vote for you….ever.
I would like to think you recognise the similarities between the parties and their treasonous actions against the peoples of NZ?
The same horizontal and vertical lines appear on the East India Company flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_East_India_Company
Notice any interesting similarities?
My ginger powder just got cheaper
Only good thing I can see
Just remember politicians are crisis actors
Experts in self preservation at our expense
Who act out real live parts in the crisis they create
There is an endless supply
Except they don’t create the crisis, their parasitical globalist masters do. Any politician that meets the threshold to enter parliament is controlled, including everyone’s favourite, the minister of foreign affairs and trade.
Very nearly everything dragging NZ down is happening globally to every European and Western nation. Could we be forgiven for thinking, “global conspiracy”?