Why did the Prime Minister of New Zealand give preference to the opinion of his Foreign Minister? Big uproar over India’s FTA

News India Live, Digital Desk: New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has created a new controversy in his own government regarding the recent Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India. Luxon is considering this agreement as a big success for New Zealand, which will increase employment opportunities in the country, improve people’s income and will also give a big boost to exports. In his view, this deal will give New Zealand businessmen direct access to more than 140 crore customers of India. But the surprising thing is that this enthusiastic decision of Prime Minister Luxon has been strongly opposed by his own government’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters. Peters even called the deal “neither free nor fair.” He clearly says that this trade deal with India is not in the interest of New Zealand and it will prove to be ‘a bad deal’ for the country. After all, where did the differences start? Winston Peters’ biggest concern is related to dairy products. New Zealand is a major global exporter of dairy products. Peters alleges that in this agreement, New Zealand completely opened its market to India, but in return India has not made any significant reduction in the tariffs imposed on New Zealand’s main dairy products like milk, cheese and butter. They argue that this will harm local dairy farmers in New Zealand and they will not be able to convince rural communities for this decision. In fact, to protect the interests of millions of its small farmers, India has kept dairy products out of duty concessions, due to which there is resentment in New Zealand. Not only this, Peters has also expressed his concern over the provisions related to immigration in this agreement. He says that this deal is giving Indian professionals greater access to the New Zealand labor market, especially at a time when the jobs market in New Zealand is already under pressure. Foreign Minister Peters even said that in this agreement “speed was given priority over quality”. He believed that the government should have taken full time for a better and balanced agreement, and not hastened. At the same time, Prime Minister Modi and New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon have described this agreement as a strong will to deepen the relations between the two countries. He believes that this agreement can double the trade between the two countries in the next five years and bring investment of up to $20 billion to India in the next 15 years. This deal is expected to benefit Indian exporters, especially sectors like textiles, marine products, engineering and MSMEs (Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises). This difference of opinion within the New Zealand coalition government clearly shows that there is deep disagreement about such a big trade agreement.