Reaction: Skills initiatives welcomed

Exporter Gilbert Ullrich was pleasantly surprised by the Budget.

"It shows the Government is listening," he said. "I've been to some of the Government's recent business forums, and I think they are listening - and it shows."

The Budget, he said, had delivered several of the sorts of initiatives that would help New Zealand's skill shortages and thus positively affect our ability to take on overseas markets.

Even an export success story - the booming marine industry - had difficulties finding the right sort of skilled staff, he said.

One important move in the Budget was the allocation of $56 million over the next four years to create more than 17,000 industry training places.

"We're going to need more skilled people to produce the things we need to, to add value," the Ullrich Aluminium founder said. "Our industry's been hollowed out."

However Mr Ullrich questioned whether there were enough teachers and others to pass on industry skills.

"There's a lack of people in place to train these people," he said.

To thrive, New Zealand should concentrate on adding value to the items it exports.

Although some of the Budget's initiatives would boost innovative business - among them incubator support programmes and the seed capital investment fund - it wasn't focused enough on enhancing the value of New Zealand's goods overseas.

"We still need to address the basic issue of adding value to export markets."

Mr Ullrich says a wealthy country can afford the social systems that New Zealanders take for granted.

"Wealth-creation has to be the first priority of any government.

"But we can create wealth only by trading successfully on the world's markets."

He was less impressed with the Budget's cash injection to university research centres.

The Budget allocated a total of $40.6 million over four years for "centres of research excellence" in tertiary institutions and increased funding to allow tertiary education providers to continue a fees freeze through to the 2002 academic year.

Tertiary institutions might be crying wolf, Mr Ullrich said.

"Universities are going to have to earn more funding. They're turning out a lot of graduates but we need a lot of other skills, in my mind."


www.nzherald.co.nz/budget

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