northland chamber

Small Business – The engine room of the economy


The Northland and NZ economy is primarily made up of Small Medium sized businesses.

As of February 2006
96% of enterprises employed 19 or fewer people.
87% of enterprises employed 5 or fewer people.
64% of enterprises had no employees.
The number of SMEs increased 4% in the year to 2006.
SMEs accounted for 30% of all employees.
Firms with 5 or fewer employees accounted for 11% of all employees.
From 2001 to 2006, SMEs accounted for 59% of all new net jobs in the economy.
There were 11,751 net new entries into the Business Demography dataset at February 2006.
Self-employed people accounted for 11% of people in the labour force (at March 2007).
Since 2003 the Small business advisory group has been providing a small business voice to the policy makers in Wellington. Last week the Small business Advisory Group made 16 further recommendations to the Government on behalf of Small Businesses.

Recommendations included

Making the business environment in NZ competitive to Australia’s with comparative benchmarks formulated and published to keep score.
Three recommendations on simplifying, removing obstacles and tax concessions for hiring and training Employees
Tax changes like abolishing FBT and increasing deductibility for childcare to encourage people into the workforce.
Other recommendations including resource management changes, the provision of credible business advice and export assistance

The panel for the Small Business Advisory is made of up small business owners from around New Zealand.

The Small business advisory group recommendation and report are freely available on the Ministry of Economic Development Website at www.med.govt.nz

Unfortunately there is currently no representation from Northland.

Do you have any recommendations for the Government? How could the environment we operate in be better served for businesses? The Northland Chamber of Commerce is always keen to hear from Small businesses on their concerns. We represent business at local and central government level to ensure that the business community is well served.

Have a look at the report and let us know your concerns

The Northland Chamber of Commerce is the networking, education, advocacy and marketing group for Northland business, and is part of a nationwide network of 30 and a world-wide movement of 21,000 chambers. Subscription to the free fortnightly chamber e-news can be arranged on info@northchamber.co.nz. Enquiries to 09-4384771 or www.northchamber.co.nz, www.kaiparachamber.co.nz and www.farnorthchamber.co.nz
You can have a say on this by going to the Northland Chamber of Commerce Feedback website on www.northchamber.blogspot.com