22 July 2002

Progressive Coalition policy

One stop job shop

The Progressive Coalition will ensure there is a one stop shop for Government assistance for inward investment and for business support.

Creating jobs

The Coalition Government has created a job on average every 12 and a half minutes in the last two and a half years.

That’s 104,000 jobs.

Our economic policy aims for sustainable economic growth at 4% for 10 years and continued employment growth through helping business development.

To do this we have to ensure our business assistance and our investment services are working together as closely as possible. The agencies working with business need to have stronger relationships so that the business customer can access them seamlessly through one point of contact.

We will ensure investment advice and support and business advisory services can be accessed from one place.

In this last term we set up the Ministry of Economic Development and Industry New Zealand, and promoted socially, economically and environmentally sustainable development. We have started to make sustainability and reinvestment in New Zealand a practical reality

Sustained growth should lead to full employment at an adequate standard of living. Full employment fosters full participation of citizens in society, and the prospect of rising future living standards. In pushing for growth and full employment, it is crucial to ensure that government spending and taxation policies and the Reserve Bank’s interest rate policies targeting inflation do not undermine each other.

Our commitments

The Progressive Coalition will coordinate government policy towards sustainable economic growth by working towards a “one-stop-shop” for economic, industry and regional development assistance.

We will create a "one-stop-shop" for inward investment (coordinating the work of the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, TRADENZ, InvestNZ and Industry New Zealand).

We will also:

- Continue with economic development strategies aimed at maximising export growth, including considering further export insurance or similar schemes.

- Continue the successful work of Industry New Zealand in finding and encouraging new industries, expanded beyond existing businesses to include the funding and encouragement of community-based enterprise through grants, mentoring, facilitation and scholarships.

- Develop a new productivity enhancement service in Industry New Zealand to assist new and existing industries to raise productivity by increasing the number and sophistication of production processes in New Zealand and by incorporating innovation into them. Initially the aim will be to encourage our main export and infrastructure industries to make a quantum leap in the efficiency with which they employ all their resources.

- Develop networks of firms within industries and across industrial boundaries. These networks will be set up to provide mentoring, problem solving, joint technical support, quality assurance and generic marketing services.

- Progress the initiatives linking local tertiary education institutes with networks of local firms accessible to local people; encourage the employment of the skills of creative people in local firms because that is how new industries are often started; encourage regions to develop an integrated plan for education and training; co-ordinate the Polytechnic Regional Economic Development Fund with both the Regional Partnerships Programme and the work of the Tertiary Education Commission.

- Pilot projects in community-based funding for business development opportunities. Communities that feel they could benefit by setting up a finance facility will be able to apply for assistance to see if it can be made to work.

- Invest as much as is reasonable, and sensible, of the Superannuation Fund within New Zealand.

- Develop coordinated policies in key industries (e.g. wood processing) to use inward investment to maximise local content in processing and manufacture.

- Send clear signals to investors concerning government stability, coordination of policy, stable economic conditions, partnership with local business, communities and government.

- Better define “the national interest” in legislation to include cultural and national identity, environmental and economic factors including; a significant addition to the productive capacity of the industry or enterprise in which the investment is to be made, the creation of new job opportunities, the introduction into New Zealand of new technology or skills, the development of export markets, increased local processing of primary products, development of local industries which compete with imports, and improved productivity).

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