India has three new trade agreements in five months. Turning them into export orders will take approvals, paperwork and better data.
On 20 October, the day of Dussehra, India’s free trade agreement with New Zealand takes effect. It will be the third Indian trade agreement to start operating in under five months, after Oman on 1 June and the United Kingdom on 15 July. Ministers will celebrate the date. The tougher question is what happens on 21 October. Start with scale. India sold New Zealand about $711 million of goods in 202425, and $108 million of that was agricultural produce, according to the Commerce Ministry’s factsheet.
A small cles and auto parts, The Tribune reported, and textiles, apparel, leather, footwear and engineering goods are among the sectors expected to gain. In labour-intensive trades, a duty of that size can decide a price quote. market can still matter to the firms that serve it, but the gains will depend on the sector. Averages come first. The WTO puts New Zealand’s simple average applied tariff at 1.9 percent in 2025, with 66.1 percent of tariff lines already duty-free.
The Global Trade Research Initiative says only 20 to 30 percent of eligible Indian exports use FTA preferences, and it blames high compliance costs and low tariffs abroad. Low use can be rational. Peaks tell a different story. New Zealand has applied duties of up to 10 percent on ceramics, carpets, vehiA tariff cut helps only exporters who claim it. In a written Lok Sabha reply on 28 July, Minister of State Jitin Prasada said exporters had obtained 4.45 lakh certificates of origin under the UAE agreement since May 2022 and 2.73 lakh under the Australia agreement since December 2022.
By my arithmetic, that works out to about 8,900 a month fied separate origin rules for the UK deal in July, and New Zealand will have its own. The government’s e-CoO 2.0 system issues and verifies certificates digitally, while its Trade Connect platform gives tariff information and guidance, DD News reports. Farm goods face another for the UAE and 6,300 for Australia. Oman’s 783 certificates in its first two months come to roughly 400 a month, too early to read much into. None of these counts says who is filing. The Observer Research Foundation notes that proving origin costs about the same for a $5,000 consignment as for a $5 million one, so large firms absorb the cost more easily.
Origin rules also differ by agreement, so a firm that has mastered one cannot assume the next will look the same. The counts above cover the UAE, Australia and Oman. Customs notigate. New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries sets an import health standard for fresh fruit and vegetables and clears consignments on arrival. Indian farm exports to New Zealand grew from $95.62 million to $108.21 million between 2023-24 and 2024-25, and about a third faced duties of only up to 5 percent, the same factsheet says. For these goods, biosecurity approval matters more than the tariff. Three steps would help. First, within 90 days of the agreement taking effect, the commerce and agriculture ministries should publish the short list of farm and food products they will put before New Zealand’s regulator first, and file those applications early. Exporters would then know where to invest in compliance.
Second, use data the government already holds. ORF suggests linking exporter records to Udyam registrations to show utilisation by firm size every quarter, without new surveys. Third, report results. The commerce ministry should publish utilisation for the Oman, UK and New Zealand agreements at each anniversary, by product and firm size. Governments can cut a tariff by decree. They cannot decree an approval or fill in a certificate. That work starts on 21 October. Shantanu Rai is a Junior Research Fellow at Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, where his research focuses on HRM, Business Economics, and Banking Sector.