Economic scorecard shows we're talking more than doing

New Zealand is not making much progress on the economic scorecard launched by Business New Zealand two years ago as part of a campaign to encourage growth.

The updated scorecard, issued today, shows that, in the words of Business NZ chief executive Simon Carlaw, "There is more talking than doing".

Of the 22 indicators in the scorecard, seven show improvement, three lack sufficient information and 12 are either stalled or going backwards.

The main gains have been in training, education and research and development.

There has been a significant increase in the number of people taking part in formal industry training schemes and a higher proportion of school leavers now achieve NCEA level 1 or an equivalent.

Private sector spending on R&D has improved.

Crown debt is now smaller in proportion to GDP and the level of central Government spending in proportion to GDP has also shrunk slightly.

New Zealand has moved up the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness ranking and the population is getting younger.

But those gains have been outweighed by the areas where the targets are as far away as ever.

Infrastructure, in particular, is a problem area with static spending on roading, broadband penetration is not up to the mark and the country's place on the global technology ranking is much lower than when the scorecard was launched.

Local government spending - which, according to Carlaw, "impacts more heavily on the business sector than any other because of differential rates" - is as high as ever and the corporate tax rate is unchanged. Time lost through industrial stoppages is four times higher than when the index was launched, and eight times the target.

There has been no progress towards either a common currency with Australia or a free-trade agreement with the US.

Rankings on the human development index, the sustainability index and entrepreneurship have all fallen.

The proportion of firms getting top scores in the Ministry of Economic Development's best manufacturing practice surveys has fallen.

The chief indicator, the OECD's ranking of GDP per capita, shows New Zealand has fallen one place since the scorecard was launched.

Carlaw said it was unfortunate the Government had "gone quiet on its own growth target of getting back into the top half of the OECD".

Because of that Business NZ believed the scorecard was "all the more important as a quantifiable measure of New Zealand's success or otherwise in delivering on the growth goal".

As a result the organisation would "continue to track the indicators and to actively take the case for growth to the wider community because growth matters".

"Sustainable accelerated growth will determine the length of hospital waiting lists, whether state of the art drugs or merely generic drugs are available, or whether roads are made safer."

Carlaw said the scorecard originated from the founding of Business NZ by the merger of several business organisations three years ago. "We felt we needed some benchmarks against which to measure both the country's progress towards achieving a higher standard of living and our own progress in getting the right policies to do that put in place."

The OECD wealth ranking was chosen as the benchmark because only by increasing per capita income could the country afford all the social and environmental services enjoyed by rich countries.

It was not simply wealth for wealth's sake but a means to buy improved outcomes.