India\u2019s long-awaited free trade agreement with New Zealand is expected to be signed by the end of April, with a high-level ministerial visit paving the way for the deal.<\/p>\n
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday that New Zealand\u2019s Minister for Trade and Investment Todd McClay would travel to India later this month for the formal signing.<\/p>\n
He said\u00a0McClay would be coming to India in the fourth week of April when \u2018we plan to sign the FTA\u2019.<\/p>\n
The announcement follows the conclusion of negotiations between the two countries in December last year, after nine months of talks aimed at strengthening bilateral trade ties.<\/p>\n
Separately, a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to New Zealand is expected in the near future, although dates have yet to be confirmed. The proposed FTA is likely to be a central outcome of the visit.<\/p>\n
Momentum for the trip gathered pace after bilateral discussions between Goyal and McClay on the sidelines of the WTO Ministerial Conference MC14.<\/p>\n
According to a Ministry of Commerce and Industry statement issued on 29 March, both sides reviewed preparations for the prime ministerial visit during their meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cExpressing high enthusiasm for this visit, New Zealand confirmed that a substantial list of deliverables are currently being finalised by both sides for this visit. To further strengthen economic ties, New Zealand will be hosting a high-level business delegation during the Prime Minister Modi\u2019s visit,” the statement read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India\u2019s long-awaited free trade agreement with New Zealand is expected to be signed by the end of April,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-363700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}