India free trade talks to begin in April

Free negotiations with India will start in April, said Trade Minister Tim Groser last night. File photo / Richard Robinson

Negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement between India and New Zealand will begin in April, India's high commissioner announced at a function in Auckland last night.

Trade Minister Tim Groser and Indian Commerce Minister Sri Anand Sharma announced the imminent start of negotiations towards a Free Trade agreement at a WTO summit of trade ministers in Davos, Switzerland, last week.

Indian High commissioner Sureesh Mehta, speaking at the launch of the Auckland chapter of the India New Zealand Business Council, said mechanisms had been put in place for FTA negotiations to begin.

"Everything has been put in place, we are [now] only looking at dates which are acceptable to all the parties," he said.

Mehta said a team would be arriving from India "no later than April" to begin negotiations with its New Zealand counterparts on the FTA.

He said there was "a lot of homework to do" to decide on what the proposed FTA would cover.

"Trade and commerce will be the biggest thing that affects relationships between countries in the coming decade," said Mehta.

He said New Zealand and Indian businesses entering into "strategic partnerships" would be the way ahead for trade between the two countries.

The business relationship between the two countries needed to be taken "couple of notches" higher, Mehta said.

"India seeks a very stable, permanent relationship with New Zealand."

Michael Orton, chief operating officer of eBUS, a New Zealand company doing business in India, also spoke at last night's event.

eBUS provides services for Indian production agencies and broadcasters, distributing TV commercials online via its India-based server, rather than the production companies having to send hard copies of the films to broadcasters.

Orton said the eBUS business model was highly-efficient, and provided cost savings and "stress-relief" for production agencies and broadcasters.

If any problems arose with a film at the broadcasters end, eBUS would then digitally facilitate getting the film back to the production agency where the issue could be fixed, before sending it back to the broadcaster to be aired, he said.

Orton said the same process could be extremely time consuming and problematic if hard copy tapes were used instead of sending the films digitally through eBUS' server - especially because airport security x-rays had a tendency to wipe the tape's content.

He said one of the reasons eBUS had invested in the Indian market was because there was no comparable competition providing visual content management.

"India is a very sophisticated market and there are lots of TV channels," he said.

"We have a joke in the office that India's idea of a recession is single digit GDP growth."

But Orton said their were many challenges around doing business in India, especially when it came to dealing with bureaucracy, though he hoped the imminent FTA would smooth over some of these issues.

Auckland City Mayor John Banks spoke at the launch. He said he wanted to give "240 million reasons" why an FTA should be signed between India and New Zealand.

"We need to trade to survive," he said.

Banks said Auckland City should work towards establishing a stronger relationship with India.

"I believe the Super City should work on a sister city relationship with an Indian city," he said.

Banks said city to city trading would be an important part of business in the future.

High Commissioner Mehta said although India's attitude towards business had been "socialist orientated" in the past, the future would be an altogether different story.

"India can rightfully claim its place on the global stage," he said. "India has arrived."