On May 31st the Government of New Zealand released a statement announcing the commencement of groundwork for the eventual negotiations of a FTA between New Zealand and Russia. The statement was released shortly after a meeting between Tim Groser, Trade Minister of New Zealand, and Elvira Nabiullina, Russian Minister of Economic Development, held in Moscow. Tim Groser summarized the achievements of the meeting, saying, “Russia has agreed to proceed towards a formal trade agreement with New Zealand, subject to a satisfactory outcome of scoping discussions.”

According to a New Zealand Government statement, a FTA with Russia could be of great benefit to New Zealand. Russia currently imports in excess of US 30 billion in food annually, which represents a sizeable market opportunity for New Zealand exporters. In a joint statement released on June 1st, both Ministers claimed that the economies of Russia and New Zealand are complementary, with great prospective for cooperative growth. Tim Groser also pointed to the potential of agritech, clothing, specialized manufacturing, ICT, and tourism firms offering services to a Russian market. Currently, two-way trade between the nations has reached USD 300 million.

The two Ministers are expected to instruct their respective Governments to prepare objectives and scopes for the possible FTA. Both Governments will also call for public submissions on the prospective agreement.

Photo by Velvet Android

The New Zealand Government has called for submissions on the possibility of a FTA with Korea,
according to Trade Minister Tim Groser in a January 23rd press release. Further, the Korean Foreign Minister, Yu Myung-hwan visited New Zealand over the subsequent weekend. Talks regarding the FTA were scheduled for Sunday.

According to Mr Goser, Korea is the sixth largest trade partner for New Zealand. He also extolled the great benefits that would be found by both countries in today’s economic environment by embracing the FTA possibility. There are also great benefits to New Zealand by forging strong ties with such a well developed and mature economy as Korea. The Korean GDP for 2008 was almost US$954 billion, while New Zealand for the same period was US$128 billion.

New Zealand already has a film co-production treaty signed with Korea.

According to an announcement made by the Chile Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley, made on the 21st of November at a meeting of trade ministers at the APEC summit, Australia and Peru are currently looking to join the four country FTA in its next round of expansions. A similar announcement was made in regards to the United States in September.

Currently, New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei hold a free trade agreement, called the Trans Pacific Economic Partnership (although previously named the P4). It was signed in 2005 and came into force 28th of May 2006. The free trade agreement aims to abolish 90% of tariffs for trade between participating countries by 2015.

There are no details yet of how new entrants into the free trade agreement will affect existing members, in fact it is not yet clear which countries will be participating in them. All APEC members are welcome to apply to the agreement before the commencement of the March 2009 negotiations.

The visiting US-NZ Council president John Mullen was quoted as saying that Barack Obama does not wish to reverse any globalisation work done so far, and that the? situation would only be worse off if it were. He said that relations between the United States and New Zealand are at the highest point that they have been at in over a quarter of a century.

Some commentators even claim that New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance will not be as much of a hindrance under Barack Obama as it was previously. The stance was often seen as one of the key disagreement points in previous negotiations with New Zealand.

Free Trade talks are scheduled to be held in March between the United States and the Trans-Pacific Partnership of New Zealand, Brunei, Singapore and Chile.

It is expected that the full details of the Free Trade Agreement between the ten nations of the ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand will be worked out in December, along with some small issues which still remain.

The ASEAN states consist of Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Cambodia, Brunei Darussalam. The sheer size of the economy represented by this collection of nations is expected to be a large boost to the New Zealand economy.

It is expected that ASEAN will continue current talks this week in order to finalize a free-trade agreement between ASEAN and India. Pending the results of the discussion, next week could be used for talks with the ASEAN ambassadors of New Zealand and Australia. Predominantly the subject will be ensuring that the ASEAN-India free-trade agreement can be signed in December.

With the rising concern of ASEAN about the importance regional trading pacts in the face of continually rising powers like India and China, the possibility of talks about a free trade agreement between New Zealand and ASEAN is certainly a realistic discussion point.