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Damien O’connor says exporters need diverse options and opportunities when it comes to trade.
Agriculture and Trade Minister Damien O'Connor recently addressed the NZ-China Business Summit in Auckland. He spoke about the importance of the Chinese market to NZ exporters but also the need to diversify our export footprint. Here's part of his speech:
China is an important market for us and will continue to be so.
However, our Government understands that our exporters need diverse options and opportunities when it comes to trade. In line with the Government's Trade Recovery Strategy, we are therefore continuing to promote diversification and resilience, by pursuing new Free Trade Agreements and modernising existing ones that benefit New Zealand and New Zealand businesses.
Our Government has successfully concluded and modernised a number of significant Free Trade Agreements in recent years, including:
Taken together our FTAs now cover around 74% of our exports - a phenomenal achievement.
With some of these key FTA building blocks in place, we are also focusing on existing FTA mechanisms to ensure we fully leverage the benefits from our FTA network for all New Zealanders. For example, this year we are chairing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), including hosting the CPTPP Trade Ministers in Auckland over the last couple of days where we all formally welcomed the United Kingdom's accession to CPTPP.
Our hosting year provides an opportunity to demonstrate leadership in areas of importance to New Zealand, by advancing the implementation and expansion of the agreement, highlighting the importance of inclusive and sustainable trade, including Indigenous trade and economic empowerment, and ensuring that the agreement remains the gold standard for our region and delivers for all our people.
The UK's accession to CPTPP and the growing number of economies that want to join CPTPP, demonstrate the value and appeal of the agreement. We continue to welcome applications from those economies that can meet the high standards of the agreement and other requirements as outlined by CPTPP Ministers.
Other regional architecture has opened up pathways across the region, such as the recently upgraded ASEAN, Australia-New Zealand FTA. This agreement now includes more modern trade facilitative rules, including streamlined customs procedures and stronger e-commerce rules.
We are also working on evolving regional architecture, for example, New Zealand is actively participating in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), with the United States and 12 other countries. This is an important way to bring the United States into the regional trade and economic architecture, following its withdrawal from TPP.
Negotiations on a 'first-of-its-kind' Supply Chain Agreement, one of the four distinct pillars of IPEF, were concluded while I was in Detroit in late May. Intensive work continues on the other three pillars.
We are also looking ahead to how we can band together with other likeminded economies to tackle trade issues that have the potential to drive economic growth and innovation into our future.
In this context, New Zealand has been proud to establish the Digital Economy Partnership (DEPA) with Singapore and Chile. The DEPA aims to cover the breadth of the digital economy. It is designed to function as a pathfinder agreement that will help shape new norms in digital trade over time. As part of this vision, the DEPA is an 'open plurilateral' agreement, meaning it is open to other WTO members who can meet its high quality standards.
We are pleased to have recently concluded accession negotiations with Korea, and have ongoing discussions with other economies interested in joining, including China.
Looking out beyond the region, New Zealand is continuing to invest heavily in multilateral institutions, such as the WTO and in normal building institutions like APEC and the OECD.
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