Gisborne Chamber of Commerce president Ashley Fisher did not agree with Gisborne’s place on the scoreboard.
“I don’t think you would find that the average business owner or person working in employment in the region would have that perception,” Fisher said.
“Improvement from a very low base might be what skews the data; we are comparing it to a cyclone period.”
Business confidence from members of the Chamber of Commerce was low based on the anecdotal data they collected.
Fisher said regulatory requirements for industries like agriculture, horticulture and forestry had created uncertainty around the ability to get back to business as usual after Cyclone Gabrielle last year.
The regulatory environment needed to support the longevity of business, but he didn’t believe it currently did so.
“Yes, there are many external factors affecting their ability to be profitable, but there is a great deal of regulatory uncertainty around land use that is impacting their ability to make investments and move forward.”
Tuffley told the Gisborne Herald that the ASB report was a relative ranking, noting that Hawke’s Bay topped the scorecard recently for similar reasons to Gisborne.
“The first half of last year would have been a challenging time. [The result is] reflecting that bounce from the post-disaster lows of last year,” Tuffley said.
“Many parts of the country have been facing challenging times for the last couple of years and recently.”
He said ASB aimed for consistency with the data it used in the scorecard and there were “some encouraging signs” for Gisborne relative to other parts of the country.
“It is better to be at the top than the bottom.”
Richard Searle, Trust Tairāwhiti’s general manager of economic development, said the scorecard showed “areas of brightness”, but he also advised caution around some of the growth metrics, noting the ASB Gisborne employment data came from the Household Labourforce Survey- a combined Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne dataset.
Searle said tax-based employment figures from quarter two in Gisborne, data used in Trust Tairāwhiti’s Quarterly Economic Monitor June 2024 released this week, showed a 1.2% fall in employment that quarter which slowed the region’s average annual employment growth to 0.6%, according to the report.
“That 1.2[%] fall in the June 2024 quarter was one of the larger falls nationally, so I think there should be just a little caution around the employment growth,” Searle said.
“Non-residential building consent [mean] clearly future intentions for work. That’s great [but it] can be a bit of a lumpy indicator.”
Anecdotally, Trust Tairāwhiti had heard that key sectors were struggling locally.
“We know that forestry GDP was off quite a lot in the June quarter compared to the previous quarter through March, and exports are down both locally and nationally, which has a big indirect impact.”
Searle believed the growth stimulus from cyclone recovery and rebuilding would continue into the near and medium term.
“We will hopefully continue to see some interest rate relief which would flow through. We’re seeing inflation come off and those are often indicators of brighter times ahead for those core contributors to our economy, predominantly around our primary sector.”
Trust Tairāwhiti’s Quarterly Economic Monitor June 2024 found that economic activity in Tairāwhiti remained lower over the last year, but there were signs of stabilisation.
“Provisional estimates from Infometrics show a 0.5%pa recovery in economic activity for the June 2024 quarter compared to a year earlier, slowing the annual decline to 0.3%pa over the 12 months to June 2024,” the report said.
Jobs had been lost in the primary sector, food production, retail and wholesale trade, and professional services industries, while jobs were gained in construction, health and education.
Renee Grant, owner of homeware and gift store Grant Bros, had not seen the ASB scorecard, but as a retailer she was not convinced by the message Gisborne’s top placing gave about the economic state of the region.
“People don’t have any money, cost of living, insurance increased, rates increased, mortgage rates increased - no one has any spare cash, so the dollar is just not going as far.
“I know a lot of business owners who have decreased their staff because they have to cut costs. I know a lot of us have not been buying product because there is just not the turnover and there is just not the money there.”
Grant said a good summer with good weather was necessary to support Gisborne with visitors.
James Pocock joined the Gisborne Herald as chief reporter in 2024 after covering environmental, local government and post-cyclone issues in Hawke’s Bay. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives near Gisborne. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz.
