Businesses urged to capitalise on free trade deals
Waikato Times, New Zealand
Businesses urged to capitalise on free trade deals
By Chris Gardner - Waikato Times
17 June 2010
New Zealand should be looking to become the food bowl of Asia and use free trade agreements to do it, according to financial services firm KPMG.
Ross Buckley, chairman of KPMG’s agribusiness division, released the KPMG Agribusiness Green Paper at Fieldays yesterday, urging agribusiness to look to the opportunities in China, India and the Association of Southeast Asian nations by becoming more familiar with free trade agreements and applying them to their own businesses.
Mr Buckley said New Zealand businesses had to capitalise on free trade agreements.
"We believe that Asia is absolutely critical to the success of the New Zealand economy.
"We need to live up to our strengths."
The KPMG Green Paper, which followed a recent report which warned New Zealand would soon be overtaken by low-cost producers in Asia and South America, said almost 630 million people in the middle income class of the Asia region were better off in 2005 than they were in 1995, and half a billion people had improved their economic circumstances and moved above the poverty line.
Continued growth was expected.
"What this means is that the sheer size of the population in this region [approximately 40 per cent of the world’s population] and the opportunities this affords to agribusiness cannot be ignored."
New Zealand’s trade with Asia has increased from 6.6 per cent, in 1964, to 34.5 per cent in 2008.
