Promise over industry transformation plan
REGIONAL Development Minister Stuart Nash will either achieve great things for southern engineering firms, or have to come back to Otago and explain why not.
He told the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective engineering summit in Dunedin yesterday he genuinely believed he had a mandate from the Cabinet to implement the final recommendations of the Government’s longawaited advanced manufacturing industry transformation plan.
‘‘If you are sitting here again in 10 years’ time and nothing has come out of this, then I will come down and personally apologise, because I want this to move, I really do, because I know that this will make a big difference.’’
The industry transformation plan was one of a range of issues discussed by the summit, which followed a similar gathering in Invercargill on Thursday.
A range of Dunedin manufacturing and engineering companies discussed industry talking points such as depreciation policy, whether direct government grants were preferable to equity deals, loans or convertible options, the rising cost of transport and exporting, and staff shortages.
Mr Nash said that labour was a worldwide issue, not just a southern or New Zealand one, and would require innovative solutions.
Some reforms asked for by the sector, such as tax law changes, could take up to two years to enact, but there were a range of measures the Government and manufacturers could introduce almost immediately, he said.
‘‘We have to sell the industry so that young people at school say ‘that’s what I want to do for a job’, and I think we need to change the perception of the sector.
‘‘I have to wait and see what the final recommendations in the report are but I have got around and talked to groups like this and been given a plain message that people want transformation.’’
Manufacturing firms employed about 9000 people in Otago and contributed $822 million to annual gross revenue from the province, he said.
‘‘I’m told the sector has been growing at about 10% for the past twothree years, which is why the sector is a key part of the Government’s economic strategy.’’