Chairman Rex Graham said the council was always trying to reduce the number of publicly excluded items, or portions of meetings.
"We have a responsibility to minimise the public excluded meetings and only do it when it's absolutely necessary," he said.
The regional council chair and chief executive are responsible for determining which items in the agenda are heard without members of the public present.
Although he said the public were "probably critical" of these meetings, "you have to have them".
"They are necessary at times, especially if you're working in the commercial arena, which we are," he said.
"If you have a particularly sensitive issue, or if its commercially sensitive then it does needed to be publicly excluded for commercial reasons".
Although there are a range of matters which can fall under the parameters of publicly excluded, Mr Graham said those of commercial sensitivity would be "the priority ones".
Over the past three years a majority of the publicly excluded items have related to the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme, or the council's investment arm - the Hawke's Bay Regional Investment Company ltd.
Others include the confirmation of publicly excluded minutes from previous meetings, and the appointment of directors to Napier Port.
Mr Graham said he was surprised at the relatively low number of publicly excluded meetings over the past three years, "because we've had very complex commercial issues to discuss".
"Because they were sensitive they needed to be in confidence, so I'm quite surprised by the low [number], but I'm very pleased we're on the low, given that we've had those complexities."
"Given we've had the most sensitive issues, I'm very pleased with our performance in the way we stack up statistically."