KEY POINTS:
Entrepreneur and business coach Ben Ridler asked 70 of his clients: "What will make a significant difference to your business next year?"
Here are a sample of the responses he received:
* Deferred Tax will only create a problem later and allow some operators to further increase debt they will never be able to repay.
The Finance Industry is up to its armpits now because of bad lending-too easy without controls and so do we need to reinvent the DFC that fell over because it ended up with all the Bad debt from bad Loans. No free lunches and better budgeting controls and education not speculation.
* Training incentives / rebates for companies investing in up skilling the community.
* Urgent action to rationalise the RMA and get on with urgent infrastructure upgrades.
* Resources (financial and simplification of) made available to assist with the large amount of reporting required.
* More access to coaching and mentoring for SME businesses.
* Subsidise youth training. ie, Apprenticeships etc where employer can pay reasonable wage instead of youth being on dole.
* Stabilised fx trading as this year has seen such unpredictable highs and lows within a 6 month period. Increased access or assistance for trading/importing with relations in Australia, UK and China. There is quite a bit of help for exporters but nothing really the other way around.
* Anything to stimulate the economy. Maybe in the housing & building sectors introduce grants to pay deposits to low income earners & first home buyers which would only be repayable on the sale of a property. This could keep all the trades people in work instead of losing them overseas.
* Reduced tax rates to 20 per cent for Companies and Trusts
* Assistance with recruitment both domestically and internationally - we struggle to compete for attention against large companies that have greater resourcing for this, yet talent would be better utilised in faster growth companies. Similarly for training of staff.
* Generally a drastic simplification of all compliance matters for smaller businesses. Changes to employment to make things easier for employers.
* Keep the R&D tax incentives. Keep planned expenditure on infrastructure, roading & rail projects. With regard to Q3, particularly investments resulting in productivity improvements. With regard to Q4, particularly those small and medium business exporting products or services.
* Current and past 'capital' funding has all been aimed at what the government has determined are 'focal' areas. This has meant that tech businesses are the ones who have benefitted. The reality however is that NZ needs to develop it's expertise and products in ALL areas of manufacturing.Whilst it is nice to say we are supporting this or that high tech area, as a country we need sustainable businesses across all areas and to do that we need to encourage investment.
My business is in Transport Engineering and we work hard at developing new products to improve our customers competitive positions. But we are not 'sexy' and consequently have to fight it out alone without help. This is not encouraging us to invest, which means the country is more reliant on imported product. This is then a double edged sword as it hurts local employment and also hurts the countries balance of payments. Let's have support targeted at improving our manufacturing base and making it more competitive. This is where real value is created.
* More flexibility to the redundancy clause, so if things do improve we can rehire for the same role.
