The Shippers’ Council today welcomed media accounts suggesting increased flexibility from key players on dairy and other issues that caused the TPP negotiations to stall at Maui. The United States has called a meeting of TPP Ministers on 1 and 2 October in Atlanta.
“The Council represents the interests of most of the major New Zealand exporters. This negotiation with so many of New Zealand’s important export markets with whom we do not have FTA linkages (US, Canada, Japan, Mexico) is therefore of great interest to our members”, said Council Chairman Mike Knowles.
“We realise that there is more work to be done to achieve an acceptable outcome for New Zealand on dairy and hope that officials and Ministers can reach agreement on such terms. .
“While negotiations on some dairy products are continuing it would seem that outcomes in other product areas could be very exciting for New Zealand. The Council is confident that the benefits of this negotiation will outweigh any negatives by a big margin.
“The Council hopes that agreement can be reached in Atlanta and the agreement made public. We suspect that once the details of the agreement are made public much of the controversy surrounding this negotiation will go away”.
ENDS
