Dr Lockwood Smith National Party Trade Spokesman

27 March 2003

Massive slump in export income

The slump in New Zealand's export income shows no sign of letting up - on a downward spiral for the past 11 months, according to the National Party Trade spokesman Lockwood Smith.

"Our export income for each of the past 11 months has been less that for the same month the previous year, according to the latest provisional figures.

"The biggest decline of all is for the last month, which is down almost 11% compared with February last year.

"That means our export earnings for the year are down more than $2 billion compared with the previous year," says Dr Smith.

"That's a huge slump in anyone's language and will start to feed through into the wider economy very soon. "In fact, in its recent forecasts the Reserve Bank is projecting our growth to decline markedly from now on.

"Recent OECD analysis shows there is nothing in the Labour Government's policy mix that's going to help New Zealand deal with this significant projected decline," says Dr Smith.

"Shuffling the deck chairs and manicuring around the edges with handouts to businesses along with rhetoric about innovation won't do anything to overcome the increasing deadweight of excessive taxation and regulation.

"We're now copping the trade backlash from a Government commandeering an excessive proportion of the economy and squeezing businesses large and small," Dr Smith says.

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