Traffic, skills and resources beat tax cuts
SMEs want answers to practical issues, says expert
Small and medium-sized businesses are hungry for more resources from tomorrow’s Budget to help boost performance, says an industry head. Aside from wanting increased funding for infrastructure and additional measures to eliminate traffic congestion, many SMEs are hoping for changes that directly improve business operations.
“I don’t hear a clamour for tax cuts interestingly; I don’t think that’s what they want,” said Sue De Bievre, chief executive of accounting company Beany.
“They want practical support around relieving some of the issues they’ve got such as not being able to attract suitably skilled people, they want the traffic sorted out so they can get to work and get their people and goods to work . . . they want solutions to those practical issues everyone is experiencing, but impacting really heavily on business.”
De Bievre said she had seen an “increased hunger” this year from businesses wanting more resources in order to perform better.
“All of those business owners who may have been content for a number of years running their plumbing company or whatever small service business, now want to know more.
“I think it’s like a grass roots kind of feeling, they know they can’t be as productive and profitable as they could be so they are really reaching out for more information.”
According to an Auckland Chamber of Commerce survey of over 100 Auckland businesses, getting the right staff with suitable skills and transport infrastructure are the top issues businesses are currently facing.
More than 50 per cent said they were having difficulty getting the right talent.
“This is denying Auckland growth and opportunity which has an impact not just on Auckland but on New Zealand,” said Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett.
“A solution to this would be a better defined immigration policy and the training of those that have been failed by the education system, but deserve the opportunity to participate in their community through work. It will take investment now to fix this issue — if we do not we will face successive generations of social welfare dependency and its cost.”
In Finance Minister Steven Joyce’s pre-Budget speech, he said it aimed to provide more opportunities for Kiwis to get ahead. A key element included fostering a strong landscape for small and medium-sized firms.
The Government has outlined $11 billion of extra capital spend, which will take the infrastructure capital spend to $23b over four years.
“That’s probably the biggest amount of money that has been spent on infrastructure in New Zealand’s recent history, but equally importantly what the Government has said is that they are willing to look at different types of funding mechanisms,” said BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope.
Hope said he expected to see a more considerable overall infrastructure spend over the next four years, from both private and public investment.
He would also like to see Government free up land for development and housing, particularly in Auckland and Queenstown.
“The thing for businesses is that workers need accommodation ... There’s a real shortage of affordable accommodation so it makes it really hard to attract people to come and work here so it puts a lot of pressure on small businesses,” he said.
De Bievre hoped the Government would allocate funding to support further innovation.
“One of the defining characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises in New Zealand is how innovative it is, and I think the Government could do more to support that,” she said. “There’s masses of research that indicates New Zealand is one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world, certainly in the OECD, but sometimes we sort of fail to connect that to commerce, and actually making money for the country.
“We can unlock some of the potential by actually directing some atten-
I don’t hear a clamour for tax cuts interestingly; I don’t think that’s what they want. Sue De Bievre, Chief executive Beany
tion, and funds, to innovation and education so that business owners really have the right level of skill to make the most of their ideas.”
Roading and infrastructure was impacting business productivity, Barnett said.
“With regard to roading and infrastructure this impacts on business in respects of productivity — the ease of moving around Auckland, of people getting to and from work (quality of living) of moving goods and services efficiently and at a reasonable cost. Local councils are claiming they have no money — there is only one other solution and that is the intervention by central government to make decisions and deliver,” he said.
“Auckland and New Zealand has had a gutsful of lists of urgent projects that we talk about but do not deliver. The cost to NZ of a continuing unproductive Auckland constantly in catch-up mode runs into billions of dollars each year.”