Chamber Outraged by Treatment of Indian Delegation

26 October 2007

Chamber Outraged and Embarrassed by Treatment of Indian Trade Delegation

The Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce was both outraged and embarrassed to learn last night that so many members of an Indian business delegation to the Eleventh Meeting of the India New Zealand Joint Business Councils had their visa applications declined and has welcomed the government’s inquiry.

“Here we are wanting to grow bilateral trade, negotiate a FTA between India and New Zealand, and to access even greater numbers of skilled Indian workers to help ease our serious skills deficit, yet on the other hand a large number of senior Indian business representatives, invited by the Business Council, were told they are not welcome to visit,” said Charles Finny Chamber CEO.

“The Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce administers the New Zealand India Business Council and last night co-hosted what remained of the proposed Indian delegation, with the Chamber membership.

“Clearly this incident has upset the Indian side, and set an unfortunate backdrop to today’s formal negotiations between officials from India and New Zealand. It has also set back the wider business relationship and has made the government’s recently released White Paper on Asia look particularly hollow.

“The Chamber wants to know why this incident has happened, and what can be done to ensure that it does not happen again. In particular we want to know how the High Commission in New Delhi allowed this embarrassing situation to occur. We understand the business delegation had raised concerns at the visa issue with the High Commission in New Delhi but to no avail.

“Once we have some answers we expect the New Zealand High Commissioner in New Delhi to apologise to those who had their visas declined, and either the Minister or senior MFAT staff should apologise to the Indian High Commissioner.

“This incident raises further questions about our immigration policy. Rather than facilitating entry to New Zealand the Chamber is concerned that the policy is designed more to keep people out of the country. We need to shift paradigms and be encouraging greater people to people contact, particularly with the business communities of major economies,” said Charles Finny.

ENDS

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