Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will today lead a large trade delegation to Japan in the aim of strengthening a key relationship for New Zealand in the Indo-Pacific region.
The delegation, including senior business individuals, will accompany Luxon on the trip with several agreements and partnerships expected to come from the excursion.
Attracting investment into New Zealand as the country grapples with a major infrastructure deficit will also be a focus.
The coalition Government has a goal of doubling the country’s exports in the next 10 years – and Luxon said Japan is a key part of that.
“We’ve got good exporting firms, but we really want them all to scale up and become much, much larger and become much more global firms as a result of doing that,” he said.
Japan is already a major investor in New Zealand, which includes geothermal plants, forestry assets, tourism, and international students.
Despite that the Prime Minister said New Zealand isn’t where it was pre-Covid and so that requires work.
“After Covid we’ve been a bit slow out of the blocks and so we need to reinvigorate those connections and those relationships which is important,” he said.
“When you look at the OECD and the developed countries of the world, we fight it out with Mexico as one of the worst for foreign direct investment.
“The message consciously or unconsciously we have sent the world is that we’re not really open or welcome for foreign capital to come into the country.”
There is also interest in new and emerging areas around renewable energy, space, and climate investment.
“Particularly in space, we know there’s a lot of interest from Japan in what were doing in the space world,” Luxon said.
Japan is the fourth largest export partner for New Zealand.
However, it’s also a significant partner regarding security in the region.
“There’s huge amount of alignment and like-mindedness between the two countries and we want to work with like-minded partners on common interests,” he said.
Japan has been asked by AUKUS partners, Australia, the UK and US, to consider joining Pillar Two of the partnership looking at enhanced technology information sharing.
Luxon said both Japan and New Zealand will approach the issue independently.
“I don’t know what the nature of their conversations are with those three parties, the AUKUS countries, and what they’re thinking about,” he said.
Luxon said he expects those discussions will be high-level.
This trip will be the first time Luxon will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
“It’s a really great opportunity to meet Kashida because he’s a key player in global politics now as well so its really helpful to have those relationships in place,” Luxon said.
