More sick leave available

Coping with  border closure

BusinessNZ has made seven suggestions to Government to help businesses cope with the pain of Covid-19 border closure.  Allowing more critical workers into the country, allowing more family reunifications, opening up investor category visas to allow more investment to flow in, and planning for the safe resumption of business travel by exporters and others, are among the suggestions to help NZ remain internationally competitive, BusinessNZ’s Kirk Hope says.

Hydrogen moves show promise

The BusinessNZ Energy Council is welcoming the call for expressions of interest by Contact Energy and Meridian Energy to develop a hydrogen production plant in Southland.  BEC’s Tina Schirr says the move indicates NZ’s significant potential for producing hydrogen if the process can be made cost-effective.  “NZ’s advantage in this area is our wealth of renewable energy that could be used to produce hydrogen for fuel.  A new hydrogen industry could potentially take up excess electricity generation when it exceeds demand to the benefit of NZ’s energy system as a whole.” 

NZ safety prosecution overseas

For the first time a NZ company has been prosecuted for health & safety failings overseas.  A NZ-employed fumigation technician was severely injured in a fall when working on a log ship bound for China.  The Court found deficiencies in the company’s training and safety procedures contributed to the safety breach at sea and imposed a $245,000 fine on the Tauranga company.  The decision shows the NZ Health & Safety at Work Act protects NZ-employed workers anywhere in the world, Maritime NZ says.

The recent shift in immigration policy allowing 2-year extensions to 10,000 visas has been a great win for the hospitality sector, Restaurant NZ’s Marisa Bidois says.  The sector was hit hard by trading constraints during lockdowns and remains affected by a critical shortage of staff due to the border closure.  Taking the sector’s staffing concerns direct to customers with the Lights Out campaign, as well as advocating to Govt, were key to achieving the change in immigration policy, Bidois says.

BusinessNZ is opposing the plan to remove interest deductibility from residential investment property.  BusinessNZ’s submission to IRD says the move would send the wrong message to overseas investors about the desirability of investing here and would have a chilling effect both in housing and other areas.  Importantly, the move would not help measures to increase housing supply, BusinessNZ says. It’s proposed to remove interest deductibility from residential investment property in October 2021.

Business owners and key executives are invited to take the Global Competitiveness Survey run by BusinessNZ and the World Economic Forum.  The survey gathers data on factors affecting business and compares all countries’ competitiveness.  In last year’s survey NZ was ranked 19th most competitive country in the world.  To help determine NZ’s competitiveness ranking in 2021, please take the survey here