Country-to-Country Maori Digital Trading

Trading through digital exchange is becoming a reality and has certainly interested indigenous colleagues in the United States. We’re now actively working with them to push a Digital Economic Partnership Agreement (DEPA) into real action between ourselves. 

To assist that, we met with one of our whanaunga and President Director of Ata Marie Group, George Kuru. He’s been based in Jakarta for 14 years and married into the community.

George has high level experience in forestry and agribusiness, both academic and practical qualifications, and has been working on the digital space internationally. 

He says behind a move towards digital trade are the mechanics of how it actually works.  

“DEPA is another standard for making digital trade. New Zealand has domestic standards, such as bank transactions, and then there’s international standards for trades, which make things work. They’re great because they reduce the entry and operating cost of business. 

“Generally, the people who benefit are the big organisations. There’s a lot of big businesses within Māori, such as the forestry, fisheries and dairy sector, who are set to benefit. But they take a bit longer to come into effect for smaller business – if there are benefits at all – unless you can fast track it.”

George works in Asian and African countries where he says they have nothing but are completely digital at the highest level, with 5G and superfast communications. He says they’re using the best technology at the lowest cost because they don’t have any system infrastructure. Whereas in New Zealand, it’s more gradual and at different levels of development. 

Then there are other requirements, such as legality, sustainability and ethical obligations, which can be built into these frameworks. 

"If you don’t comply with international standards, they become a trade barrier. Implementing DEPA would be great because you’re removing those trade barriers while getting a competitive advantage over everyone who hasn’t done it yet. If Maori can get a head start in this area, then we’re well ahead with a competitive advantage over other industries.”   

While George has an extensive background in forestry, he concedes “they’re the biggest deadheads in the world.” The sector is very conservative and takes a long time to implement changes. 

“New Zealand exports a lot of logs and missing opportunities to add value by domestically processing the wood. It’s taking them a long time to build new industry development to process wood into high value products and the industry has been very slow to develop new markets for processed wood products. 

“The log export market is dominated by middlemen who capture most of the value in the trade. If upstream forestry – the part of the forestry sector where Maori are prominent – could trade directly on the international market, then they might be able to leapfrog development a bit.” 

Digital transformation of trade requires the adoption of digital coding of all aspects of trading, including product description, financial terms and financial arrangement, and organisational identification. Implementing codes through an online export purchase enables the trade agreement, customs declaration, and inspections to be downloaded automatically within the document or contract at the touch of a button. 

“Previously, these contracts had to be done through a lawyer and could be up to 50 pages. All of this can now be done in a second, at no cost except to purchase the software. You don’t have to pay someone to do it. It becomes a digital document and is stored, negotiated and settled. It’s important to understand that concept. That contract is made available online for tender for someone to agree and carry out the purchase.

“This has an impact on Maori who live rurally who may not have access to accountants, financial and legal support services. With those functions automated, they won’t need to. It’s the way forward with commodities.”

With the opportunities in the United States and with our resident expert in Jakarta, Te Taumata is confident as trade heads into the digital environment.