Will love to see India in RCEP final agreement: NZ minister

India's concerns are conveyed directly to us and efforts are on to figure out a solution, says O'Connor, RCEP chief negotiator from New Zealand.

New Delhi: Days after India decided to walk away from China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), New Zealand's trade and agriculture minister Damien O'Connor said Wellington along with 10 other member countries will love to see New Delhi's participation in the mega trade deal.

O'Connor, who was in New Delhi and later will be flying to Gujarat, spoke to ETV Bharat and said, "I think all 10 countries in the group would love to see India in the final agreement."

'We understand India's concerns. New Delhi conveyed its concern directly to us and efforts are on to figure out a solution," O'Connor, who is also the RCEP chief negotiator from New Zealand said.

On the sidelines of a CII event here, O'Connor conceded that dairy products form the biggest exports from New Zealand. "Dairy is the biggest export from our country. It is very important to us. The total production of our country can feed only 40 million people. So, we produce a small part of the total global production."

"India's dairy industry is significantly larger than ours. The only time we exported to India is to compliment your production in times of drought. The only area we want to focus on would be high-value dairy products," O'Connor added.

As many as 16 countries -- 10-nation bloc ASEAN and its six trading partners including India -- were negotiating the free-trade pact RCEP.

However, on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it clear that India will not join RCEP as negotiations failed to satisfactorily address the country's "outstanding issues and concerns".

In India, around 10 crore people are into dairy farming and produce 180 million metric tonnes of milk every day. On the other hand, New Zealand has nearly 10,000 dairy farmers, who produce 24 million metric tonnes of milk per day.

Despite so much of production, India doesn't export milk products.