Finance minister thinks Rotorua is 'faring pretty well'

Finance Minister Grant Robertson has confidence in the Rotorua economy. Photo / Stephen Parker

Finance Minister Grant Robertson sees "plenty more ideas in the pipeline" for growing Rotorua's economy.

Robertson was in Rotorua yesterday to speak to members of the Employment and Manufacturers Association about the state of the New Zealand economy and its future.

"I just talked to them about where we see things going, around how do we lift our productivity, investing more in research and development, skills and training, how we become more sustainable," he said.

Speaking to the Rotorua Daily Post afterwards, Robertson said he always liked coming here.

"This is an area where we know there is a huge opportunity, but also some statistics around employment where we'd like to be doing better.

"Rotorua is faring pretty well so far and has done well already, I suspect there are plenty more ideas in the pipeline as well."

He said Rotorua brought a lot to the New Zealand economy and the focus was on lifting the value of the industries we had here.

"There's a fairly obvious one around tourism and clearly, the tourism offering here is a good one, but Rotorua has a lot more strings in its bow than that and a lot of the conversation in that room was about forestry."

Robertson said he was interested in exploring opportunities around wood processing and manufacturing with wood.

"The focus of the Provincial Growth Fund is that as a country we can't afford for everyone to feel only moving to Auckland will allow them to succeed.

"We want people to feel like, yeah, there is a really good quality of life for me in Rotorua and other regions of New Zealand."

He said the "critical element" to that was creating job opportunities.