Making a case for India stepping up its engagement in the Pacific Islands and advocating New Delhi’s presence in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership on its own terms, New Zealand today underscored it wants the country to be full participant in the economic arrangement.

That India walked away from RCEP a few months ago remains a topic for discussion and the visiting Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand Winston Peters emphasised today there was a lot his country could do in the agriculture sector without hurting the Indian farmers at all.

New Zealand is of the view that India not being part of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership was neither in its economic or strategic interest. The visiting dignitary said this delivering the 32nd Sapru House Lecture on “The Indo-Pacific From Principles to Partnership” organised by the Indian Council of World Affairs here.

Stating that New Zealand played a key role in formalising the comprehensive and progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership to the benefit of its members, he said: “We therefore strongly encourage India to become a full participant in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. New Zealand respects India’s wish to seriously consider the terms of its engagement. But the blunt reality is that India’s absence from the region’s economic architecture is in neither our economic nor our strategic interests.”