New Zealand’s India Outreach: Opportunities and Obstacles

At the culmination of his recent visit to India from March 10-13, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters remarked that the India-New Zealand relationship was entering a “new phase.” Since the 1990s India has moved from being a “peripheral concern” for New Zealand to a country with which it has tried to establish a “core trade, economic and political partnership.” In recent years, New Zealand has placed considerable importance on building its relationship with India. As Mark G. Rolls of the University of Waikato noted, although this NZ Inc. India strategy had other objectives – such as increasing trade in services, attracting more skilled Indian migrants to New Zealand, and working with India at the United Nations – securing access to the growing Indian market for New Zealand goods formed the crux of New Zealand’s approach to its relationship with India. In effect, despite the NZ Inc. India strategy stating that trade would form the basis of its approach to India, the policy has failed to improve New Zealand’s goods exports and trade relations with India. The foreign minister’s visit and the noticeable shift in New Zealand’s approach to India does indeed indicate that a “new phase” of the relationship may be on the horizon.