New Issue of IN Business

The latest issue of IN-business magazine has just been published.   If you have not come across it before, IN-business is published in partnership with NZTE and publishes a range of stories about New Zealanders in business.
This issue is particularly arresting because one of its focuses is business in Russia especially in the light of NZ's negotiations for an FTA with Russia.   Russia is of course one of the BRICS nations alongwith South Africa, India, Brazil and China.   In one of the articles Stuart Prior, former NZ ambassador to Russia, says that we have a real chance to build important new business in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan through this FTA.   I loved the illustration on p.31 of the Russian bear looking at the quizzical kiwi.

I have been to Russia as a tourist (not in a tour bus) and it was hard - Prior says that Russia is ' most easily consigned to the too-hard basket' - I can imagine why.

Recently the Dominion published an article saying that Russia offered huge potential for textile firms and companies in our textile hubs of Levin, Palmerston North, Christchurch and Auckland had been visited by several Russian textile companies in May.  This is great news especially for our local exporters in the Manawatu-Horowhenua.  (Dominion May 26, 2011, C3)

Russia is obviously a market to watch.