Dairy boost

A pumping dairy industry fuelled growth in many regional economies in the year to March 2014, data from Statistics NZ shows. Standout growth of 11 per cent and 10.6 per cent respectively in Southland and Canterbury was driven by high dairy prices and also construction in Canterbury. The regional gross domestic product report shows overall growth of 6.7 per cent nationwide. ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley said the figures reflected a rebound from drought and a big increase in dairy prices. The common factor in the fastest-growing regions was growth in the dairy industry. ‘‘What we did see over that year was the rebound from drought, and that really big increase in dairy prices, so regions with fairly high dairy exposure saw a big lift in the value of output, and you can see Canterbury, Southland, Waikato and Taranaki all have that in common,’’ he said. Even without the agriculture sector, however, the country had had a strong economic year, Tuffley said. ‘‘If we overlook dairy we still had a pretty reasonable year of growth – particularly in Canterbury you can really see the impact of the rebuild coming through,’’ he said. About a third of growth in Canterbury was from construction. New Zealand’s total GDP was $229.7 billion for the year, and the North Island contributed 76.6 per cen compared with 23.4 percent from the South Island. Auckland was still making up the lion’s share, contributing 35.3 per cent of GDP. Wellington and Canterbury contributed 13.2 per cent and 13.1 per cent respectively.