{"id":635915,"date":"2026-10-20T04:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T04:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/635915\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T04:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T04:10:09","slug":"india-fta-builds-resilience-in-global-markets-for-nz-primary-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/635915\/","title":{"rendered":"India FTA ‘builds resilience’ in global markets for NZ primary sector"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement with India officially starts today<\/a> and it is a big deal for the primary sector.<\/p>\n

India is one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world and many primary sector products will now be duty-free when exported to India, while others will have tariffs phased out over several years.<\/p>\n

Included in the mix is honey, wool, sheep meat, wine, fruit and forestry.<\/p>\n

Federated Farmers Meat and Wool chair Richard Dawkins describes India as an exciting and developing market.<\/p>\n

“It really builds resilience into those international markets, so if there are shocks in other countries – such as tariffs in America – it just gives our exporters the ability to look to other markets and see some return there.”<\/p>\n

Dawkins said a 33 percent tariff on sheep meat will disappear immediately.<\/p>\n

Market access for apples, kiwifruit, and honey is conditional on New Zealand helping India’s domestic producers become more productive and competitive.<\/p>\n

That had not put off Kiwifruit growers here, with more vines being planted as the 33 percent tariff is gone for a quota of fruit.<\/p>\n

Brigid Crawford has an orchard in Te Puke and said the agreement was a positive trade-off between the two countries.<\/p>\n

“The win for India is that they do have access to some expertise from within our kiwifruit industry. We value that relationship. And where Indians are going to grow a lot of the kiwifruit is up in an area where it doesn’t necessarily have a lot of access to infrastructure and importing, so it hasn’t got that competitive geographical element to it.”<\/p>\n

India’s tariff cuts came as a relief for the wine industry here, and Anishka Jelicich from NZ Winegrowers was pleased as wine from here faced some of the highest tariffs in the world to get into India’s market.<\/p>\n

Wine exporters now have a 10-year tariff cut from 150 percent to 25-50 percent, with full removal by 2036.<\/p>\n

“It was a huge burden for anyone to bear, so those tariffs are now going to come down over time, making our wines more affordable for the growing Indian middle-class and we know once they taste our wines they are going to love them.’<\/p>\n

Jelicich said 20 local wineries were about to showcase their wines at an event in Mumbai to nurture the growing market.<\/p>\n

Dairy was not included in the free-trade deal. In a statement, Fonterra said it was disappointing that the negotiations were unable to secure any significant new core dairy opportunities into the Indian dairy market.<\/p>\n

India’s government decided to protect its politically and economically sensitive dairy sector from the competitive impact of New Zealand’s efficient and lower cost exports.<\/p>\n

However that was not the case for local logs and wood products. Some 95 percent of products shipped to India are now tariff free,<\/p>\n

Forest Owners Association president Dean Witehira said log suppliers were already getting inquiries from India as its building industry was growing .<\/p>\n

“Many of our log exporters are receiving calls from India buyers looking for log suppliers coming from New Zealand so there’s some really exciting opportunities starting to emerge. So we’re quite excited by what that means.”<\/p>\n

Witehira said wood exporters had relied heavily on the China market until now.<\/p>\n

One of the big gains for India was all its exports to New Zealand are now duty free. It is not the same for New Zealand – the majority of tariffs are being cut or phased out over several years, leading to 95 percent of exports being duty-free.<\/p>\n

And as part of the FTA, New Zealand has made a commitment to promote investment into India, with the aim of increasing private sector investment by $34 billion over the next 15 years.<\/p>\n

The deal included a new annual quota of 5000 skilled Indian work visas, capped at 5000 active holders at any time. The visa are valid for three years.<\/p>\n

The Labour Party and ACT supported the National government’s agreement with India, but New Zealand First did not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement with India officially starts today and it is a big deal for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-635915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635915","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=635915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}