Chambers promote recipe for success

By KEVIN TAYLOR

The bare bones of an action plan to gain 4 per cent growth in gross domestic product has been released by New Zealand's chambers of commerce.

The Achieving Faster Growth booklet focuses on five areas which the chambers say the country needs to develop action plans around.

Wellington chamber chief executive Phil Lewin said it was hoped to get five documents on the action plan areas released by mid-year. The areas are:

* Lifting the performance of innovation systems so doubling productivity growth to 2 per cent a year is a real possibility.

* Improving market access and removing barriers to exports so 70 per cent export growth over the next decade is a real possibility.

* Ensuring Auckland is fit to increase its economy 80 per cent over the next decade, and the rest of the economy is not held back by lack of access to resources and infrastructure.

* Lifting literacy and other skills, and using immigration to help deal with the ageing population.

* Limiting the growth of central and local government to 1 per cent annually, so the sector's relative share of the economy is reduced from 40 per cent to 30 per cent over the next decade.

"We are going to drill down in depth in all those five areas, and produce discussion papers that will address specific policy recommendations," Lewin said.

Achieving higher growth would not be simple and required change and difficult decisions.

The more people who understood that and agreed on the path forward, the more likely it was that results would be achieved.

Lewin said the chambers would promote the booklet and it had already been sent to the Government.

A pamphlet summarising the booklet was also being written.

Between them, the country's 30 chambers have 20,000 members.

Lewin said the chambers needed to speak with a considered voice on the big national policy issues, not just local issues.

The Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) said the chambers' growth plan made the business verdict unanimous - the country needed a strategy to sustain growth rates of 4 per cent a year.

Chief executive Alasdair Thompson said sustainable growth at that level or better was needed.