GIAB focus on agribusiness as key to growth

Growth and Innovation Advisory Board

Media Release

The GIAB focus on agribusiness as key to growth and innovation

Enabling New Zealand's world-class primary industries to maintain their role as New Zealand’s leading export earner, by innovation and wealth creation, is the aim of an agribusiness project being undertaken by the Government’s Growth and Innovation Advisory Board (GIAB).

"Harnessing the future innovative capacity of agribusiness is vital to lifting New Zealand’s growth rate and its standing in the international income league," GIAB chair Rick Christie said today.

"New Zealand's land-based industries have proved time and again their capacity to innovate, increase productivity and add value. Agribusiness in New Zealand has true world-class scale and specialisation and it belongs at the centre of the growth programme.

"The growth and innovation framework sees a future New Zealand driven by science and market-led innovation, with an increasingly skilled, motivated and well-rewarded workforce and strong global linkages. The further application of biotechnology and ICT to our already world-leading, land based industries will underpin their continuing strong performance.

“Agribusiness is a large, capital and knowledge intensive cluster with a big future in its ability to take advantage of growing world demand and new technologies being developed both upstream and downstream.”

"The Growth and Innovation Advisory Board will act as a catalyst and facilitator, bringing together industry players and key government agencies to identify areas of highest growth potential and a programme for action."

Mr Christie said that GIAB had already commissioned a scoping report on the sector from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. “This is an excellent report which brings us a timely update on the sector and its future potential”, he said. “However, it is also a reminder that New Zealanders cannot take the continued growth of these industries for granted.”

"We are now engaging with other government agencies and with private sector interests to develop a shared vision of the future path for the sector. We intend to report to the Prime Minister before the end of the year," Mr Christie concluded.

Notes for the Editor:
The MAF report Contribution of the Land-based Primary Industries to New Zealand’s Economic Growth is available from the MAF website http://www.maf.govt.nz/mafnet/

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