The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is keen on better understanding the boon that investor-category migrants provide the country, an area it doesn't yet measure beyond gauging the minimum entry requirements.
Deputy chief executive labour, science and enterprise Paul Stocks told Parliament's commerce select committee the ministry is considering research on extra economic spin-offs beyond the initial investment needed for migrants to enter New Zealand under the investor category visas.
While there's an expectation those migrants will ramp up their domestic investment once they've arrived, the ministry only tracks that those people meet the the criteria of their visa.
"What we have found is that new migrants to New Zealand in the investor category will obviously do the minimum required, and once they've spent some time here and got more familiarity with the market, they will invest over and above that," Stocks said. "There is a valuable research avenue here to actually look at what we're getting from the additional investment, and it's something we have discussed as part of our potential research programme."
Last month MBIE released a summary of exploratory research into follow-on investment from migrants, which showed a higher proportion of those new arrivals could easily meet the investor-plus category, which requires $10 million, but chose to apply under the $1.5 million investor category. Those investors' initial investment was largely in corporate and government bonds, with follow-on investment for investor-plus mostly in commercial property, and investor migrants investing in their personal residence.
