Business

Uneasiness from businesses over TPP exclusions

08:04 am on 10 March 2018

Business leaders are uneasy about trusting the domestic courts of some Trans Pacific Partnership countries to settle disputes.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and trade minister David Parker at one of the final TPP meetings earlier this year Photo: AFP

New Zealand and ten other nations signed the revised TPP in Chile yesterday.

The government also signed side letters with Australia, Malaysia, Peru, Vietnam and Brunei that exclude the use of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS, that allows foreign firms to sue governments.

Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard said firms should be careful when doing business in some of these countries if they were unable to rely on the ISDS.

"I looked at those countries where we have agreed not to have ISDS and I think it is a concern in some of these countries.

"We definitely have had exporters who have experienced problems in some parts of the world."

Overall, the new TPP would lift incomes and create more jobs, she said.