Greater investment in education, initiatives to decrease unemployment and affordable housing are the issues Tauranga leaders hope will be addressed in today's Budget announcement.
Priority One chief executive Andrew Coker said the Budget could revitalise the city's workforce if money was invested in the right places.
"As a city andregion, we face a looming economic crisis of an ageing workforce further complicated by the loss of our young people to training, education and jobs out of the region," Mr Coker said.
"I firmly believe that any support and investment by central government here in vocational to post-graduate education will have a direct pay-off in attracting an in-flow of young people here which will assist to address our demographic imbalance and substantially lift workforce productivity."
He also hoped the Government would support areas, such as Tauranga, that were grappling with growth and the associated cost of infrastructure, help for building owners that were required to undertake earthquake strengthening and support for business and the tertiary sector that would assist innovation and industry-led tertiary and research provision.
Mayor Stuart Crosby said it was important not to push more costs back onto ratepayers but said the city needed to work collaboratively on initiatives that would provide more and higher paid jobs. Investing in initiatives that would help the private sector grow in areas that would provide higher paid jobs, increasing funding into science, research and development for new products and more funding into education to prepare people for the workforce would help to do that, he said. Mr Crosby said it was also important to "keep a lid on interest rate rises".
Chamber of Commerce chief executive Dave Burnett said the Budget needed to include a scheme to make housing more affordable in the Bay of Plenty. "It's not the biggest issue but it is a social issue that has an impact on business," he said.
Mr Burnett hoped today's announcement would provide assistance to cut down compliance costs for business and help small and medium businesses grow, policies to ensure we continue to achieve surpluses and schemes to increase apprenticeship programmes and drop youth unemployment.
Tauranga Boys' College principal Robert Mangan said the Government needed to make sure education remained free.
"At present there is a real cost to parents to ensure schools are able to provide the level of education that both the school and the parents expect. The reality is that education continues to cost parents to support the wider opportunities provided by schools," he said. He believed the $359 million injection into the Investing in Educational Success initiative could be better spent to provide additional professional development for teachers within schools. "However, any additional money towards educating our children is to be applauded," he said.
