Written by Admin | October 20, 2009
New Zealand businesses offer a wide range of products that are competitive in the global market. The days of New Zealand being the ‘market garden’ for the United Kingdom disappeared in the 1960’s. The size of our dairy and meat export portfolio can fool us into thinking that the non-food manufacturing sector is not very competitive. That view is simply untrue. We are competitive (have a comparative advantage) in a wide set of goods and services to various markets around the world. This diversification reduces the risk profile of our exports, which is likely to have helped support the New Zealand economy through the recent economic slowdown. This note provides some empirical evidence to illustrate the diversity of our export portfolio – a level of diversity that has existed for many years.