KEY POINTS:
Setting up a pilot Pacific home ownership programme is one of several projects included in a Pacific Economic Action Plan.
The plan, put together by the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, aims to boost Pacific prosperity and sets out a range of ways to achieve that over the next decade.
Goals include developing the Pacific workforce, businesses, creative industries, emerging industries, leadership and entrepreneurial skills.
Included is a Pacific Women's Economic Development Plan, which aims to raise employment, income, education, business management and ownership levels of Pacific women, who lag behind every other group in New Zealand in those categories.
Included among the actions set out in the plan is to "scope, develop and pilot a Pacific home ownership programme" in partnership with financial institutions and Housing NZ.
It emphasises that home ownership provides another means of access to capital for those wanting to start a small business.
Research shows that most Pacific people rent homes and many live in state houses. Only 20 per cent own their homes compared with nearly 50 per cent of other New Zealanders.
Acting Pacific Island Affairs Minister Luamanuvao Winnie Laban said 25 organisations, across government, tertiary institutions and the private sector would contribute to the plans' implementation.
"We can use our extended family and communal ways of doing things to support our families into home ownership," she said.
Other facets of the plan include:
* More research in key areas.
* Developing a careers website using role models to promote education.
* Promoting financial literacy programmes.
* Encouraging more Pacific people to take up apprenticeships.
* Establishing a women's mentoring scheme.
* Establishing a business mentoring scheme.
* Promoting opportunities in creative and emerging industries.
* Providing government internships for undergraduates to provide them with the necessary experience in the public sector.
Prime Minister Helen Clark said Pacific people had made good economic advances during the past eight years, with the group's unemployment rate halving. "These plans aim to harness their enormous potential and lead Pasifika communities towards greater economic prosperity," the Prime Minister said.
- NZPA
