Some of the figures included in the Whanganui & Partners economic dashboard are GDP, consumer spending and house prices.
Photo / File
Some of the figures included in the Whanganui & Partners economic dashboard are GDP, consumer spending and house prices.
Photo / File
Whanganui's economy continues to perform strongly but growth is slowing in some areas.
The latest data compiled by Whanganui & Partners shows Whanganui's GDP at $1.56 billion for the year to September 2019, an increase of 2.6 per cent on last year.
The figure sits just above the national GDPincrease of 2.5 per cent on last year.
Whanganui & Partners chief executive Mark Ward said over the past two years Whanganui has seen its GDP growth accelerate.
"That acceleration had its peak in March this year, when our GDP growth was calculated at 3.4 per cent," he said.
During the same period, the national GDP growth was calculated at 2.7 per cent; however Ward said Whanganui's accelerating GDP growth was never going to be sustained.
"The past two quarters have brought us increasingly in-line with national growth.
"Ideally, we'll remain at or above the national GDP growth rate throughout 2020."
Mark Ward wants to see Whanganui's GDP tracking consistently above or at the national average.
Photo / Lewis Gardner
Ward said some infrastructure limitations, such as the number of available houses, are forcing Whanganui's GDP to stabilise.
Consumer spending in the year to October 2019 comes in at $557.6m, up 5 per cent on the same period last year.
"Consumer spending is used as a gauge of confidence in the economy, so we keep a close eye on that one," Ward said.
"Our consumer spending growth has outpaced the national average for 26 months in a row now."
Ward said residential consents was the standout in the figures.
"We're happy to see residential building consents have increased from the previous quarter.
"We're still below our wider region and New Zealand as a whole, but it's encouraging to see our rate of building homes is accelerating."
Whanganui & Partners' report shows Whanganui had 142 residential consents issued in the year ending September 2019, an annual increase of 8.4 per cent.
Whanganui has seen an increase in the number of residential housing consents issued.
Photo / Lewis Gardner
The Manawatu-Whanganui region had an annual increase of 12.1 per cent, while the national annual change was an increase of 12 per cent.
The figures show the Manawatu-Whanganui region had an unemployment rate of 4.5 per cent in July this year, which is down two percentage points from last year.
In September, Whanganui saw a 3 per cent increase in job seekers on the previous quarter, and a 10.7 per cent increase on 2018.
"We would love to see the job seeker numbers going down, though our data reflects the same trend as New Zealand overall, where there number of people on the job seeker benefit is going up," Ward said.
"The widely accepted explanation is that benefits are, or are perceived to be, easier to access under the current government so more people are claiming them."
The median sale price for a house in Whanganui was at $300,000 in October this year.
