New Zealand Business Leaders Hold Roundtable Alongside Luxon In Singapore

Tuesday, 5 May 2026, 3:53 pm
Article: RNZ

Jo Moir, Political Editor in Singapore

New Zealand businesses keen to expand their footprint and shore up supply chains in Singapore - the gateway to southeast Asia - held talks on Tuesday alongside the Prime Minister.

ANZ Bank hosted the roundtable at their stylish Singapore offices overlooking Marina Bay and a harbour packed full of ships.

ANZ chief executive Antonia Watson said the idea was to have a very "open and constructive conversation about how we can do things better, how we can make sure the supply chain isn't overtly impacted by what's going on at the moment".

"The Middle East crisis has probably brought it to a head…and we were thinking what can we do as ANZ because we've got really good contacts in the region.

"It seemed like a really relevant topic to bring people together on," she said.

The 29-strong business delegation that accompanied Christopher Luxon met with a powerhouse of Singaporean business counterparts on Monday for the inaugural leadership forum.

That gathering came out of the comprehensive strategic partnership deal struck between prime ministers Lawrence Wong and Luxon in October last year.

That forum has already generated a number of new ideas about how the two countries can collaborate on business, and what's needed from government to break down the barriers to achieve it.

Watson told RNZ the breakaway group she was part of came up with 19 different ideas "but we've tried to bring it down to three big ones that we want, to make them really practical".

"So, for example, there's already businesses that have got together and agreed on things. Xero and the AI forum in Singapore had some good conversations, so now, how can we bring some of the AI capability in Singapore to New Zealand, for example?

"How can we improve some of the supply chain and where are regulations holding us back? And how can government maybe help us with that?"

She said the co-convenors of the forum will pull together those big ideas and share them with the government.

Speaking at the roundtable on Tuesday afternoon NZ time, Luxon said he was interested in getting a sense of two things from the business leaders.

Firstly, the structural challenges associated with the fuel crisis, for example, logistics and port configuration in the long term and how that can be addressed.

Secondly, Luxon said while government has been working closely with business during the fuel crisis, he wanted "free and frank conversation" to "talk about the crisis with respect to costs and logistics and what we're seeing there, and if any settings need to be changed".

Luxon said the performance of the economy isn't "joined up in the way it needs to be for a simple small country like New Zealand".

"I think it's overly complicated, so let's have a little bit of a braver conversation around some structural reform we might need to think through in the medium to longer term," he said.

Speaking after the roundtable event, Luxon said it had been a great chance to talk about how to improve supply chain efficiency and productivity to grow the economy and get exports to the world.

"We want to be able to continue to grow our economy, you've seen in the last year we've grown our exports by about $12 billion and ... for the first time, in the last five years we've now got more exports than we've got imports into New Zealand.

"There's things that we need to do as government in a regulatory sense but we agreed that we would work together as business and government on how we could build out a good plan for the next 15 years or so."

Despite fuel surcharges on commercial vehicles crossing the Cook Strait on the Interislander having gone up 54 percent, he said the government had not yet considered the possibility of subsidising state-owned enterprises.

"I acknowledge that there will be obviously higher costs coming into the supply chains ... the key issue of course, and even over the events of the last 24 hours, is to have ceasefire negotiations and a settlement in the Hormuz Strait."

© Scoop Media

RNZ

New Zealand's public broadcaster, providing comprehensive NZ news and current affairs, specialist audio features and documentaries.

Radio New Zealand is a Crown entity established under the Radio New Zealand Act 1995. Radio New Zealand News are vital elements in our programming, providing impartial news and information to New Zealanders every day. Radio New Zealand (RNZ) provides listeners with exciting and independent radio programmes in accordance with the Radio New Zealand Charter.

Contact RNZ

• Website - www.radionz.co.nz
• Twitter - @rnz_news
• Facebook
• Link - Contact RNZ