National Party leader Christopher Luxon says improved and better relations with the world’s fastest emerging economy, India will be a priority of his government if elected to power on 14th October this year. Luxon was critical of Labour government of its lacklustre attitude towards the relation between two countries. He said it’s a shame that Labour government has put the most important Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between two countries on back burner. Christopher Luxton said if elected to power in elections this year, it will be priority of his government to secure the strategic FTA deal with India.

Luxon was critical of Labour government for being unwilling to improve the relations between two countries and take advantage of the surging Indian economy. He said it’s unfortunate that during Labour government the two-way trade between two countries has declined instead of making any headway. Christopher Luxon was speaking at the day long India-New Zealand Summit held at the Swaminarayan Complex in Papatoetoe. It was National Party’s initiative to discuss the most pressing issues with Indian business and community leaders that currently New Zealand is facing. The day long programme was divided into several forums like India- New Zealand relations, Law and Order, Education, Immigration and Workforce and each panel consisted of one National Party MP and 3-4 business and community leaders and expert of their fields.

The prominent MPs apart from National Party leader Christopher Luxon were Todd McClay, Mark Mitchell, Erica Stanford and Penny Simmonds and former National list MP Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, who was also the man behind this event. The other prominent panellists included Vijay Goel, Chairman Bank of Baroda, Sameer Handa, Sai Bedekar, Brijesh Sethi, Krish Naidu, Chand Saharawat, Sunny Kaushal, Narendra Bhana, Jaspreet Singh, Arunima Dhingra and Radhe Nand. All the panellists expressed their strong views on crucial issues of declining law and order situation in New Zealand, rising inflation, and immigration matters. Most business leaders were critical of the present government’s handling of such serious matters with an unpretentious approach hence we see the outcome of out-of-control law & order and high inflation. This government is happy keep printing new money and keep increasing wages and interest at any given opportunity. This government on one hand has laid out number of restrictions for new skilled migrants and on the other hand has failed miserably to create any infrastructure and train the local talent to bring them to workforce. This is one of reasons the hospitality industry is facing an acute shortage of much required work force all over New Zealand. Surprisingly the government’s inaction is resulting the tourism and hospitality industry losing money to the tune of billions of dollars every year, but no required changes are made yet to the immigration rules.