The CBAFF Conference 2011

World Class Service - Local Solutions was the theme of CBAFF's Annual Conference at the Bayview Wairakei Resort from May 11-13.

More than 100 delegates were informed and entertained by a range of political and sector leaders, including Minister of Transport, Hon Steven Joyce and Minister of Customs, Hon Maurice Williamson.

Other keynote speakers included Acting Chief Executive and Comptroller of NZ Customs Service John Secker, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Transport Agency Geoff Dangerfield ,Director-General of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Wayne McNee, Logistics Operations Manager of Rugby New Zealand 2011 Jennifer Cameron, and Murray Sherwin, Chair of the New Zealand Productivity Commission.

Hon Maurice Williamson

Minister of Customs, Hon Maurice Williamson, stressed the economic importance of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) when addressing delegates.

"For a small country with a small population FTAs are critical to maintain our competitiveness with our exporting countries. A recent ANZ study on FTAs found that New Zealand agricultural exporters paid nearly $5 billion of tariffs on $8.5 billion worth of exports last year. So this is effectively an 8 percent reduction in revenue and an even larger hit to farmer and grower profits.

That same study estimated that if all of these FTAs are successfully negotiated New Zealand will have free access to a market of over half the world's population, and will account for close to half of global GDP.

"This is why we have to focus on using FTAs to reduce compliance costs to business such as customs paperwork and transaction times in overseas markets. We want these agreements to reduce tariffs but also support efficient, integrated global supply chains and modern business practice.

We want FTAs to be future focussed and fully support e-commerce and paperless trading.

Hon Steven Joyce

Minister of Transport, Hon Steven Joyce reminded us international freight is crucially important to us and "increasing our international trade is crucial to actually getting New Zealand to become a stronger economy".

Mr Joyce spoke of the importance of integrated transport modes to enable goods bound ultimately for our ports and our export markets to be quickly and efficiently shipped around New Zealand – but made it clear he would not be favouring one mode over another.

Coastal shipping has a role. Rail has a role and road has a role. Some people want me to make calls about which ones are better. I think we should probably leave that to the people who are actually making the call about how to shift stuff around.