India needs to openly work with New Zealand in agriculture sector: Amitabh Kant

New Delhi [India], December 19 : Former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Tuesday said that India and New Zealand need to openly work in agriculture sector. He stressed that New Zealand has great expertise in the agriculture productivities sector.
While speaking at the event on "Partnership Pathway: New Zealand India Economic Relations alongside New Zealand's Minister for Trade Todd McClay, he said, "I'm a great believer that it will greatly benefit India if you were to use New Zealand's great expertise in the field of agriculture productivities. It's a phenomenal destination as far as agriculture product productivity is concerned."
"It does a lot of high-value production and India is an agrarian country. Almost 40 percent of Indians are in agriculture, but we need to increase earnings from the agriculture sector in a very big way and to my mind the real linkage movement between production to the end consumer through value-added production really holds just a key to that and there's no better destination than learning the art from New Zealand. We need to openly work with New Zealand in this area," he added.
Amitabh Kant noted that the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) should work with New Zealand in diary sector. He said, "You know we feel very protective about our farmers as far as the dairy sector is concerned and I am very clear about this that Fonterra etc are top class company giving massive amount of value added in milk. Now, we should not feel very threatened about it.
"We should get NDDB [National Dairy Development Board] to work with them. As you know it could be a strategic partnership so that Indian companies should gain from that and that will help us to get into a range of value of production in dairy sector. Their dairy sector is the most advanced in the world and I think there's plenty to put India to get on that," he added.
He said that India can greatly benefit from New Zealand's technological expertise and knowledge of kiwis. He spoke about eating fine kiwis in Arunachal Pradesh which he said were there due to a New Zealand working in partnership with Arunachal to produce kiwis.
"I'm a great believer that you know I went to Arunachal and some the really fine kiwis that I had were in Arunachal which was thanks to a New Zealand working in partnership with the state of Arunachal to produce kiwis that were climatically very well suited and I think my personal view is Minister that don't restrict to just one state spread across the Northeast and India, I can assure you will greatly benefit from your technical expertise and knowledge of kiwis. We are a very large country. We are bigger than 24 countries of Europe +30 thousand kilometres. So one region of India will be able to benefit radically in terms of productivity," he said.
Hailing India's growth in the digital sector, he said every Indian has a digital identity. He stated that all Indians have bank accounts have been linked with digital identity and mobile number.
He said, "The other area which is to my mind very important is that India is very digitally advanced. Every Indian has a digital identity. All Indians have bank accounts and we have linked it up with the digital identity and the mobile number. We do 48 percent of the fast payments in the world. We do 11x of what USA and Europe do. We do four x more fast savings than what China does."
Amitabh Kant said that people in India do paperless and cashless lending. He said that India and New Zealand must collaborate in digital sector. He said India is more advanced in digital sector than any other country in the world.
Speaking India doing cashless transactions, he said, "we now do paperless, cashless lending. We do paperless, cashless insurance on the go in one minute. Now these are things on which India and New Zealand must collaborate. I think that can be a Winwin. I think we are more advanced than any country in the world, and yet the digital we built up a techno economic solution where the power of data remains with the citizen."
"It gives access to it technologically on the go, and therefore it's a very different model from the Big Tech, a model of Google and Facebook and Meta and Apple and Amazon in US and Tencent and Alibaba in China. And that's some model from which I think New Zealand can greatly benefit as far as technological rerum in that area is concerned," he added.
He said that India and New Zealand can also collaborate in the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME). He noted that there are a vast opportunities across a numbr of areas.
He noted, "There are several MSMEs which collaborate with New Zealand companies and I think that opportunity is massive, it's huge and I think we need to provide greater impetus to it so that we can benefit from the technical experities and knowledge of New Zealand and we can greatly benefit from each other's expertise in several areas in the MSME sector."
Praising the scenic beauty of New Zealand, he said that bollywood films can be shot in New Zealand. He further said that post-production work can also be done in New Zealand which he stressed will be beneficial for both the nations.
He said, The other area which I really feel is a great opportunity is that you know with I've seen a lot of the rings and I've seen the studio in New Zealand land where it was actually the post-production work is done. It is really top class and I really wondered as why New Zealand has not been able to attract many more bollywood films to be shot in New Zealand.....So I really feel that all these top of the line films should be shot in New Zealand and I really feel that a lot of post-production work can also be done in New Zealand which can be of great benefit to both the countries."
He also called for collaboration between the two nations in the education sector. Kant said that New Zealand should collaborate with several Indian universities and give joint collaborative degrees.