Visa-free travel for Fijians into New Zealand needs to happen to realise the full benefits of the trade relationship between our two countries.
This was highlighted by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad, while speaking to over 200 members of the business community at the New Zealand-Fiji Annual Business Conference in Auckland.
He says visa-free travel was an essential part of dealing with trade imbalances and labour shortage issues.
Professor Prasad says New Zealand is Fiji’s 4th largest export market absorbing over $F100 million of exports annually.
Describing the need to create a ‘limitless scope’ in the relationship between Fiji and New Zealand, Professor Prasad says Fiji had the ambition to become a top ten partner in trade for New Zealand.
He adds building a relationship of limitless scope means that Fijians and New Zealanders should be able to travel and work in each other’s countries without restrictions, and a full visa-free regime between the two countries will be the start of a new chapter.
The Deputy Prime Minister says the growing Fijian diaspora in New Zealand was also being underutilised in building people-to-people relationships
He says nearly a quarter million New Zealanders will visit Fiji each year – that’s over 5 percent of their whole population, and over 70,000 Fijians live in New Zealand having migrated over the years.
Professor Prasad says in fact, Auckland can boast to be Fiji’s fourth largest city after Suva, Lautoka and Sydney.
He says on any given day during the year, Fiji hosts around 1,000 New Zealanders as tourists, and he thinks that it is fair to say that we are not capitalising fully or even extensively on these vast people-to-people links.
He urged his co-speaker and New Zealand Minister for Finance Grant Robertson to work towards full integration of both economies to help achieve this.
Professor Prasad says he expects that when done right, we will grow the two-way trade between our countries to more than $1.5 billion to $2 billion by 2030.
The Finance Minister also proposed a target of $2 billion in two-way trade between Aotearoa and Fiji by 2030.
He expressed optimism about the resurging Fijian economy that grew 18.6 percent in 2022 and anticipated a further growth of 8 percent this year.
Professor Prasad says the generous tax incentives in Fiji provided an excellent base for consolidating the agricultural sector, ICT, and business support operations (BSO) towards integrating both economies.
He adds Fiji’s agricultural sector is ready to absorb New Zealand technology and investments to meet New Zealand’s demands for a whole range of agricultural products.
He says the tax incentives are among the most generous in the world, and whether they are in niche areas or broad areas, Fiji welcomes investments in small-scale and large agricultural sectors.
The Deputy Prime Minister further says the sector is on the cusp of its most significant expansion in decades, and they want New Zealand to be part of the story of building food security.
As agriculture was particularly susceptible to climate change, he argued that investment in renewable energy and research and development was crucial.
Professor Prasad says nothing will make Pacific Islanders happier than to see New Zealand companies working with them to drive a renewable energy revolution across the country.
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