Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand and Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang, announced the successful conclusion of the HK-NZ CEP negotiations at the APEC Leaders meeting in Singapore in November 2009.
[3] The HK-NZ CEPA contains measures to improve business flows and promote cooperation in a broad range of economic areas of mutual interest, as bilateral tariff levels in merchandise trade are already low.
The Agreement also includes significant commitments relating to services, government procurement, customs co-operation, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures as well as intellectual property, competition and electronic commerce.
[6] The deal benefits more tangibly for Hong Kong firms, who exported goods worth NZ$203 million to New Zealand in 2009, 47 per cent of which incurred tariffs.
As HK is an economy which already grants duty-free access to all imports, the CEP Agreement does not offer NZ the usual gains of reduced tariffs.
The CEP provides NZ with an "early harvest" of most of the additional liberalisation which Hong Kong has offered as part of the WTO Doha round.
[9][10] An opinion by New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, worried that further foreign direct investment from Hong Kong, could benefit offshore accounts in the Cook Islands, instead of further job creation in NZ.