Cheap limes for your Corona: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern goes into business in Vietnam

analysis: Corona drinkers rejoice. Inexpensive limes may soon hit supermarket shelves.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spent another day in Hanoi, Vietnam on Tuesday, glitz and pageantry Expected by Vietnam’s elite to get out of the way, The New Zealand trade mission she led was able to get down to business.

While this effort may appear to have little fruitfulness, literally, no sweeping trade deal has been reached with Vietnam, which has already signed three regional agreements involving New Zealand.

Lime and pomelo, citrus fruits related to grapefruit, are two products Vietnamese want to sell, but have been hampered by New Zealand’s stringent biosecurity requirements for risks involving the accidental importation of fruit flies.

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Those issues have now been resolved on the Vietnamese side, and as of Tuesday evening (NZ time), as Prime Minister Ardern and Trade Minister Damian O’Connor watched over the signing of the agreement between the two countries, Vietnam’s Lime said: I had a new market.

“Now they’re $39 a kilo in the New World. There’s a reason they’re called green gold,” Ardern said.

For New Zealand, bringing strawberries and squash into Vietnam has been difficult and, as Ardern said, the country’s agriculture minister said it would be an “area of ​​focus”.

“We may be a five million market for limes, but you know there are tens of millions of potential consumers of New Zealand products in Vietnam.”

O’Connor, de facto an international salesman for the Cabinet, was preparing to advertise a new deal on Lyme. Happy. “

Despite the irony, such a deal could be important for New Zealand, an export-driven economy.

And as trade protectionism—the practice of restricting open trade because of concerns about domestic affairs—is on the rise, along with concerns about inflation and food security, past large-scale free trade agreements are a far-fetched prospect. In the visible world, its importance is increasing more and more.

The win to notch up is smaller than it used to be. Ardern spoke before his trip about talk of “food sovereignty” by some countries, a code of protectionism, as the stress of the war-induced food crisis in Ukraine ached.

And countries like Vietnam have already joined regional free trade agreements CPTPP, RCEP, as well as Australia and New Zealand free trade agreements with Southeast Asian nations that were technically upgraded in Phnom Penh earlier this week.

Ardern therefore called the Lyme Agreement a “positive outcome” of the visit.

For exporters, such an effort means a more centralized rather than democratic system of government firmly controlling enterprises, a young, consumer-hungry population, and a rapidly developing economy that once was Taiwan and South Korea. help open Vietnam, a market comparable to growing up.

“It’s a really exciting market. It’s now our 15th largest trading partner, but it has a lot of potential. Their economy is growing big. It’s a young population with a growing middle class. It’s the perfect environment for New Zealand products,” Ardern said.

Ardern and the trade delegation will travel to Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s commercial capital, early Wednesday morning (NZ time) to try to capitalize on its market potential over the next few days.