‘New Zealand PM Luxon has huge appetite to engage with India’

Auckland: India-New Zealand bilateral relationship is expected to get further strengthened across all sectors and close people-to-people ties receive a major boost as New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon flies out of Wellington for New Delhi on his first visit to India after assuming office, this weekend.

Luxon will pay an official visit to India on March 16-20 and will be accompanied by a high-level delegation, including ministers, senior officials, businesses, media and members of the Indian diaspora community in New Zealand.

“This is the first visit of a New Zealand Prime Minister to India in a long, long time. The new Prime Minister, even before he assumed office in the run up to elections, had said that he would make India first priority and will visit the country once he assumes office. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has a huge appetite, and rightly so, to engage with India, which is, you know, a global power in both economy and geopolitics. Hence, the current Prime Minister really wants to engage with India at all levels. Not just trade, but at all levels,” Bhav Dhillon, the former Honorary Consul of India in Auckland and leading face of the Indian diaspora in the country, told IANS in an interview.

Dhillon, who would be accompanying the New Zealand PM along with several other members of the Indian diaspora community, asserted that this is going to be a landmark visit, a landmark meeting between both leaders and resulting in some “landmark outcomes”.

“India has arrived on the global stage. India cannot be ignored in any way. New Zealand is also engaging with India and giving India its due share of respect and attention. It really demands at this stage. So there are going to be several MoUs signed around education, sports, defence and many other things. A New Zealand Navy ship will also be docked in Mumbai when we are there,” said Dhillon.

New Zealand, which remains a world leader in dairy farming, is also looking forward to sharing advances in its agricultural and horticultural technology with India.

India has a lot of demand for good agriculture and horticulture technology. New Zealand is ready to cooperate with India and help the large, agri-based population in India. This also fits in with the vision of Prime Minister Modi, who really wants to bring the farmers up in the country. New Zealand has all the technologies and a broad-based partnership and cooperation between the two countries would be very beneficial,” remarked Dhillon who is also a Pravasi Bharatiya Samman awardee.

The current New Zealand government, he emphasised, not just wants to bring in goods and sell in the Indian market but wants to engage with New Delhi in several spheres.

“New Zealand wants a wholesome relationship with India and develop a meaningful, enduring, long term, collaborative contact with the Indian side in all areas, not just trade. They want to have strategic alignment over the Indo-Pacific, sign defence agreements, maintain relations between the sporting bodies and do a lot of work on the education side besides, not to miss, fintech and the space technology sectors,” he said.

–IANS