It is the responsibility of the government to make sure it is easier to do trade by ridding bureaucracy and red tapes that discourage businesses from investing.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon made this comment in an exclusive interview with this newspaper saying this is one of the five pillars they were focused on to grow their economy back home.
New Zealand has set an ambitious goal to double the value of its exports in the next 10 years with huge opportunities in sight in Fiji and the Pacific, including Southeast and Northeast Asia, China and India.
“A big part of that as you can see in the room today, there was a very, very healthy Fiji New Zealand-New Zealand Fiji Business Council and businesspeople that have investments in New Zealand and only in Fiji,” Mr Luxon said.
He said while business investments was happening naturally, the government is responsible to easing trade for investors.
Noting further support for the Heat Treatment Facility in Nadi to help produce exporters meet biosecurity requirements, he said “we want to be able to encourage Fijian exporters because we’d love to see more Fijian products on NZ shelves as well”.
He said bureaucracy gets in the way of potential investments.
“Let’s make sure we’re not making the countries bureaucratic and, therefore, business owners don’t want to make investments. They get weighed down and takes too long to do things.
“You want to be a place where we encourage entrepreneurship, we give good security around smart, sensible regulations that we actually free people up to take a chance at their own capital to make an investment to build out a business idea that often employs people and creates higher wages and salaries for all our people, and lifts our quality of life.”
