Rear Admiral David Proctor, the head of the Royal New Zealand Navy, received a Guard of Honour on Tuesday in Delhi. Rear Admiral David Proctor was welcomed to the South Block by Admiral Hari Kumar, the Chief of the Naval Staff. The two navy officers exchanged greetings and shook hands. Admiral David Proctor previously paid his respects to the fallen soldiers by laying a wreath at the National War Memorial in Delhi. Significantly, 1952 marked the establishment of bilateral relations between New Zealand and India. The Ministry of External Affairs claims that the two countries have amicable and friendly relations based on their shared Commonwealth membership, parliamentary democracy, and use of the English language. India was designated as a priority country by New Zealand in its “Opening Doors to India” policy in 2011.
David Pines, New Zealand’s High Commissioner to India, stated on February 13 that both countries are attempting to remove trade obstacles and figure out how to raise demand. In 2022–2023, the value of trade between New Zealand and India was $1 billion USD. India is the eleventh-biggest trading partner of New Zealand.
Pine stated that the governments of both nations feel “a lot better could be done,” highlighting that the current focus is on bringing together the business groups of two countries so that they can identify the opportunity for trade.
“Trade in goods between the two countries is still pretty low. It’s about a billion dollars a year in both directions. And both governments often feel that we could be doing a lot better. So the first thing we are really focusing on is actually getting the business groups talking to each other. So getting them together into more regular habits of dialogue,” he said.
When asked what is being done to remove the trade barriers, he said, “We’ve done a lot of work on regulations that were affecting our exports of logs to India, making sure that India’s very legitimate concerns that wood come to you without introducing the pests and making sure those.”
“We have done similar work to allow Indian mangoes to be expected or exported to New Zealand, which I’m pretty happy about when I go home. I’ll be able to have nice things,” he added
