New Zealand looking to advance RCEP trade talks: trade minister
Xinhua, July 10, 2015 Adjust font size:
New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser said Friday that he will be looking for progress on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) talks in Malaysia this month.
"The RCEP ministerial and related meetings in Kuala Lumpur will be a chance to influence negotiations to keep the momentum going," Groser said in a statement.
RCEP, a major trade initiative launched in 2012, involves the 10 ASEAN states, China, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Together they represented markets of more than 3 billion people and a combined gross domestic product of 23 trillion U.S. dollars, said Groser.
New Zealand exported almost 30 billion NZ dollars (20.27 billion U.S. dollars) worth of goods to RCEP countries in 2014.
From Malaysia, Groser would travel to Europe for a series of high-level meetings in Dublin, Luxembourg and Paris on a proposed New Zealand-European Union free trade agreement.
He would meet Irish ministers to discuss a potential trade pact, and hold talks with his climate change and agriculture counterparts.
"Like New Zealand, agriculture forms a high proportion of Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions and they are supportive of our efforts to bring greater recognition of this into climate change negotiations," said Groser.
He would then travel to Luxembourg to attend at a special invitation the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF), which brings together 17 of the world's largest economies and is convened by the United States.
"The MEF is a chance for countries to come together ahead of the end of year negotiations and try and work through the sticking points holding up a comprehensive global agreement on climate change, and we're proud to be able to play a constructive role in that," said Groser.
He will then attend the Paris ministerial meeting on climate change. Endi