Auckland Business Profile
While New Zealand's economy has always had an agricultural base - wool, milk
and meat exports - Auckland today is a city with more of a business and services-oriented
economy. The business directory shows familiar corporate names, such as IBM,
3M, Microsoft, Cisco, Merrill Lynch, KPMG, Citibank and Price Waterhouse.
The city's mainstays are business and financial services, manufacturing, transport
and communications, and the trade and hospitality industries. These last two
reflect the importance of tourism to the country as a whole, and to its biggest
city. Auckland also contains the country's biggest port, handling 50% of container
traffic.
Tourism is New Zealand's single biggest revenue earner, currently estimated
to be worth roughly four billion New Zealand Dollars to the country. This is
on a steady increase, with Auckland reaping many of the benefits, thanks to
The city's GDP is almost 17 million New Zealand Dollars per annum, and thanks
to current low interest and exchange rates, it is estimated that this will
increase at a steady rate of about 4% per annum for the next three years. This
is 1% higher than the growth anticipated for the country as a whole, which
reflects the constant population drift towards Auckland. This drift does, however,
contribute to the city's unemployment rate of 6.9%, which is high compared
to 6.1% nationwide. The city contains 10% of New Zealand's population, and
that population on average is younger, more highly paid and better educated
than the population generally. The last major census in 1996 showed, for example,
that 19% of Auckland's residents had a university degree, exactly twice the
national average.
Asian visitors have traditionally accounted for almost one-fifth of New Zealand's
tourists, so the 30% drop in visitor numbers at the start of 1999 was attributed
to the Asian financial crisis. Economic recovery, following the impact of this
crisis, has naturally been welcomed - tourism arrivals at Auckland airport
rose by 8.7% over 1999, and retail spending rose by 4.2% for the year ending 30 September 1999.
Business Etiquette
Conducting business in Auckland is no different from that in any other major
Western city. There are no cultural pitfalls to watch out for, and the only
noticeable difference lies with the nature of the New Zealand people. They
are notably friendlier, more informal and more relaxed. Although ties and jackets
are worn, jackets may soon be discarded and shirt-sleeves rolled up. A more
informal dress code also exists in restaurants and bars, although the smartest
restaurants may still expect a jacket and tie to be worn.
Punctuality is appreciated, but no-one will be offended if the visitor is
a little late, especially at times when the traffic is busy. Invitations to
dine out or to visit someone's home, are far more readily issued than in many
countries, and are issued genuinely, not merely as a gesture. The native host
will expect to pay for a meal or a round of drinks, but guests can step in
and pay their turn without creating arguments or offence. Friendliness not
formality is the Auckland watchword.
Auckland, as one of the world's great trading ports and centres of
knowledge, is among the exciting possibilities of a lifetime. The world's
classic cities - London, Paris, Milan, Shanghai - have been evolving for
over a thousand years. Aucklanders have the good luck to live in a city-
region still in its infancy - a peerless natural environment and a cosmopolitan
city which is being forged from a mix of cultures. What could be more exciting
for Aucklanders than to be part of a successful world city in the making?
And we can have some effect on shaping it. But first we need to know what
our current status is as a world city.
Many New Zealanders dismiss Auckland as impersonal, sprawling, heartless,
the home of big business, clogged motorways, too many foreigners. They use
J.A.F.A. Jokes (Just Another F*#@ing Aucklander) to portray Aucklanders as
brazen, inward-looking, interested only in making "easy" money through
property and finance dealings. Some JAFAs contain seeds of truth, such as one
from a United States conference some years ago for political leaders of selected
world cities. When the "Governor of Auckland" was invited to speak,
three stood up, and spent the next 30 minutes explaining to perplexed delegates
that Auckland was really a mix of cities under seven Mayors (with no governor
at all)!
Cities or villages? Residents do not identify themselves as "Aucklander's" but
as coming from a particular suburb or "village". It is only when
they travel to competing world cities - Sydney, Melbourne, London, Milan, that
Auckland-is-a-community values are displayed.
Indeed, anyone who explores Auckland's vast urban landscape swiftly discovers
that this is not one world city but a cluster of competing villages the driving
force of which is an incubator of small-medium service, businesses. A city
of 100 villages, linked together by spaghetti- like motorways and a coat hanger
harbour bridge!
Auckland's world city claims face other difficulties. Most world cities have
a historical, urban heart, stunning architecture, memorable cultural and scientific
places of "achievement" to visit, and above everything an effective
public transport system so that people can get around quickly and socially.
Auckland has none of these! Instead, ribbon low-rise development is the rule
and high-rise the exception. Aucklanders, even the poorest, have cars, giving
them a mobility and access to beaches and rural pursuits that most Japanese
and Europeans can only envy. Auckland's urban growth has created a new form
of human settlement, the "city-region", with its relatively fewer
people spread over a relatively larger area. In practice there is little community
or cohesion within Auckland's city-region. The reality is a sprawl that crosses
long-drawn political boundaries.
Most Aucklanders live in the suburbs of one "city-village" but work
in a different city to that in which they live. In short, the city-region is
the sum of unequal parts: the original, now enfeebled core-city and suburbs
that have grown so big they have become "edge cities", with enough
residents and employers to feel themselves autonomous.
Yet Auckland's claim to be a prosperous world city cannot be denied. Auckland
operates as a single economy and frequently emerges near the top of international
surveys comparing the business environment of competing world cities; e.g.
Fortune magazine (23 November 1998) listed Auckland in the top five cities
for doing business in the Asia- Australasian region - behind Asia's big four
(Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong) but ahead of Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul
and Taipei.
Success has come because Aucklanders place a high value on self-sufficiency;
what business leader Douglas Myers describes in this book as "rugged individualism." When
Aucklanders decide what they want, nothing can stop them. More individual world
sporting champions come from Auckland than probably any other comparable world
city.
Since the late 1 960s, innovative, well-educated and pragmatic Aucklanders
have transformed and diversified the city-region economy from dependence on
the primary processing of a limited range of goods for the British market to
a modern diversified economy. And Auckland has continued to grow through the
turbulence of international trade shocks and recessions, and despite its structural
inadequacies.
Against that background, the sustained growth of Auckland as a unique world
city seems assured. But it will depend to a large degree, as the first 150
years have, on securing a steady inward flow of foreign investment and more
immigrants with vision and dreams wanting to relocate to one of the world's
best cities for doing business.
Business Information
NZ Quick Reference Business Guide
NZ Companies
Office
Economic Scene
National Business
Review
New Zealand Stock Exchange
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