In releasing its latest quarterly assessment of prospects for the New Zealand economy, independent forecasters BERL highlight the need to revisit New Zealand’s policy thinking.
 
BERL recently completed an economic impact analysis of Visa Wellington on a Plate 2012 (the ‘festival’). This year’s festival was the biggest yet, with 108 restaurants participating in Dine and 106 events. Sales for events were over $800,000 and restaurant sales were up over 20 percent during the festival.
The United States of America’s (US) Bureau of Economic Analysis has released data on the US GDP for the September 2012 quarter.
September trade figures is a mixed bag of good and bad news. The good news is, the monthly trade defict narrowed, with dairy exports holding up. The bad news is, annual receipts from exports and trade volume are getting lighter. The trade deficit in September fell to $791 million, from $809 million in the previous month. The decline in the deficit was due to slow growth in imports and a steady increase in dairy export receipts. In the latest monthly trade statistics, export receipts totaled $3.3 billion, almost on par with the previous month, but 3.9% lower than September of the previous year. As the devil is usually in the detail, we find that lighter exports and import volumes have led to lower annual export receipts and a trade deficit of $888 million for the year to September 2012.
The latest New Zealand Business Demography Statistics revealed that the number of businesses in New Zealand at February 2012 were down 0.8% to 469,120 from year earlier levels.
Kel Sanderson receiving his award from the Federation of Māori Authorities
New Zealanders permanently migrating to Australia has hit a new record high according to the March release of international travel and migration data from Statistics New Zealand.
On 5 March 2012, Statistics New Zealand released their international migration data for January 2012.