This Joint Statement follows the meeting of the Minister for
Trade and Investment of New Zealand and Secretary of State for
Business and Trade of the United Kingdom on 12 May 2025.
At their meeting, the Ministers celebrated the successful trading
relationship between the UK and New Zealand, which reached a
record £3.7bn1 or $7.3bn of trade in goods and services in 2024.
At the meeting, the Ministers opened the second Joint Committee
of the New Zealand-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement
(FTA).
Significant progress has been made under the FTA, including
amongst other things, the commencement of an artists' resale
royalty scheme, the inclusion of further wine making
(oenological) practices, the establishment of a legal services
regulatory dialogue, the renewal of the engineers' Admissions
Pathways Agreement, a sustainable finance dialogue, a women in
STEM event, and a visit to the UK by a delegation of Māori women
technology entrepreneurs.
Ministers commended the significant uptake of the agreement.
Since entry into force, £752.3m ($1,588m NZD) of traded goods
successfully used preferential tariffs; i.e. around 82.2% of
goods traded between the UK and New Zealand made use of
preferences where one was available.
The strong uptake of the agreement's benefits is resulting in
real savings with the potential to benefit both businesses and
consumers.
Between June 2023 and Dec 2024:
-
£164.2m or $344.5m NZD (80.7%) of goods imports into New
Zealand from the UK used preferential tariffs. Had these
occurred at standard Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariff rates,
they could have encountered an additional £9.3m ($19.5m NZD)
in duties.
-
£588.1m or $1,243m NZD (82.6%) of goods imports into the UK
from New Zealand used preferential tariffs6. Had these
occurred at standard MFN tariff rates, they could have
encountered an additional £67.4m ($141.8m NZD) in duties.
The Ministers noted that free trade is a cornerstone of
prosperity in both countries. Recognising that open markets, and
reliable legal and regulatory frameworks are essential for trade,
the Ministers committed to strengthening the rules-based trading
system.
The Ministers agreed to work together to strengthen the role that
free trade, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement
for Trans-Pacific Partnership (which the United Kingdom and New
Zealand are Parties to), plays in increasing prosperity and
reinforcing resilience against economic turbulence.
This includes growing the agreement ambitiously through further
accessions, modernising the agreement through the ongoing General
Review, and working with partners to defend the rules-based
trading system upon which we rely.
Note to editors:
Sources: Trade data sourced from the ONS
publication of UK total trade: all countries seasonally adjusted
October to December 2024 data.
Source: Source: Statistics New Zealand, publicly accessible
through New Zealand
Trade Dashboard
Trade asymmetries exist between the UK and New Zealand official
trade statistics, but this does not mean that either country is
inaccurate in their estimation. Differences can be caused by a
range of conceptual and measurement variations between the
estimation practices of different countries.
Based on data from New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs &
Trade, Statistics New Zealand, Customs import utilisation data,
April 2025
Estimated duty savings are based on exchanged country tariff
schedules and preference utilisation data (footnotes 4 and 6).
For UK imports, these are all calculated used the Ad Valorem,
Specific, or Compound tariffs applied at the CN8 level. Where
appropriate, Ad Valorem Equivalent tariffs were used (source:
MacMap). The Bank of England
spot
exchange rates (June-December 2023, and 2024) was used to
convert from GBP to NZD.
The underlying data for the imports into the UK preference
utilisation figures were sourced from HM Revenue
and Custom's (HMRC) UK goods imports by tariff regime, February
2025 data. This data is provided on a country of origin
basis.
The methodology used to calculate UK preference utilisation rates
can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/preference-utilisation-of-uk-trade-in-goods-technical-annex/preference-utilisation-of-uk-trade-in-goods-official-statistics-technical-annex#methodology-note-for-preference-utilisation-of-uk-trade-in-goods
