New Zealand PM Christopher Luxon to visit India later this month

New Delhi: New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is expected to travel to India later this month as Delhi-Wellington plans to firm up ties, with focus on the wider Indo-Pacific region. PM Luxon had met Indian PM Narendra Modi in October last year on the sidelines of the ASEAN-India Summit in Vientiane, Laos. During the meeting, PM Modi had extended an invitation to Luxon to visit India.

"He will be accompanied by a high-level delegation, including Ministers, senior officials, businesses, media and members of the Indian diaspora community in New Zealand," it said in a statement on Monday (Mar 10).

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During the visit, one of his key focus areas will be on giving a push for the Free Trade Agreement with India, which has been his election campaign promise and something he terms as a "major strategic priority".

He plans to conclude it in his current term. To give a push on FTA talks, New Zealand's Trade Minister Todd McClay was in India three times last year, meeting his Indian counterpart Piyush Goyal. One of the challenges the FTA will face will be the agriculture and dairy sector.

Dairy is New Zealand's largest export sector and a sensitive area for the Indian side, especially how the sector supports rural livelihoods. Negotiations for an FTA between the two countries began in April 2010 but have been stalled since 2015, with no agreement reached to date. Two-way trade with New Zealand was $2.93 billion in the year to June 2024 which is miniscule when it comes to New Zealand-China trade worth $37. 84 bn. Not only the trade minister, the country's foreign minister Winston Peters had also visited India in March of last year.

Luxon has consistently expressed a strong personal interest in deepening India ties, and has had professional links through Unilever and Hindustan Unilever. In the past, he has described himself as a "big fan of India," admiring its culture, economic potential, and the contributions of the Indian diaspora in New Zealand, which now constitutes over five per cent of the population.

The visit of PM Luxon will be the first ever by a New Zealand prime minister to India in nine years, the last being by then New Zealand PM John Key in 2016. Last year, Indian President Droupadi Murmu visited New Zealand, the second by an Indian head of state to New Zealand, following Pranab Mukherjee’s trip in 2016.

The visit of New Zealand's PM comes even as the country plans to diversify, and engage with the world's fifth largest economy amid worry over China. Last week, New Zealand’s top intelligence official, Andrew Hampton expressed concerns over China’s growing influence in the Pacific.

Hampton singled out the Cook Islands, a self-governing nation in free association with New Zealand, where Prime Minister Mark Brown signed agreements with China in February 2025 covering education, economy, infrastructure, fisheries, disaster management, and seabed mining, which rang alarm bells in Wellington.