Priority growth areas to boost the Bay region

Graeme Marshall.

Five workshops held throughout the region last month to help implement the Bay of Plenty's Regional Growth Study have produced a list of nine potential priority areas for an action plan to be announced by the Government in October.

The well-attended workshops were notable for the depth and breadth of those taking part, said Graeme Marshall, the study's action plan champion.

"We've had both enablers and business people at the workshops. It's been very positive with good suggestions about what should be in the action plan."

The workshops had provided an opportunity to create a list of which sectors and growth opportunities were most ready to be implemented, he said. The objective was to have something tangible for the action plan to feed into. The growth study governance group has endorsed nine priority areas, which were considered to have the most potential for increasing jobs, incomes or investment in the region within the next 10 years. They are:

* Education and skills - Creating a Bay of Plenty Youth Strategy. Enhancing tertiary provision and aligning it to growth industries.

* Aquaculture - Opotiki sea farm and harbour development. Commercial trout farming.

* Water: Collaboratively develop water catchment management and allocation mechanisms.

* Visitor economy: Rotorua wellness strategy. Regional tourism strategy.

* Forestry and related products: Develop export markets for processed wood products.

* Horticulture: Land expansion for kiwifruit.

* Geothermal: Marketing geothermal opportunities to industry.

* Agribusiness and land use change.

* Maori land utilisation.

The governance group said the project implementation plans would be developed and further prioritised according to regional readiness and likely impact. Then they will be summarised in a draft regional action plan, which will be presented back to stakeholders in August, before being finalised for the October launch.

Mr Marshall said the process had been marked by a level of collaboration between the sub-regions that set the Bay of Plenty ahead of a lot of other regions where the Government had done regional growth studies.

"We don't have to go through the political barriers to make progress. That's all taken care of - this is all about how do we make this actually happen."