New Zealand has scored highly in a survey of international trade.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Enabling Trade Report 2009 ranks countries on services, policies and institutions that help foster open trade.

New Zealand has come in 11th – behind Singapore, Hong Kong, and eight Scandinavian and European countries.

BusinessNZ Chief Executive Phil O’Reilly says this ranking is a testament to our openness to international trade, sound institutions and services and our hard work over decades to get good trade deals with other nations.

“New Zealand’s score would be even higher if not for the barriers erected in a number of countries against agricultural exports.

“The 2009 Report also provides a valuable checklist of some areas where we could improve our performance, including regulation and infrastructure,” Mr O’Reilly said.

The study’s overall ranking is made up of four sub-areas: market access, border administration, infrastructure and the regulatory environment.

Our best sub-area ranking (5th) is for border administration, seen as highly efficient and transparent.

Our regulatory environment also ranks relatively well (11th), with effective domestic competition and good ratings on ethics and lack of corruption. This ranking would be better still if obstacles in hiring foreign labour and regulation of foreign direct investment were overcome, the Report notes.

New Zealand’s infrastructure is ranked 22nd. The Report said this score could be improved with improvements to road and rail infrastructure.

The most problematic area was market access. While scoring well for our low import barriers, the barriers faced by our exports brought this ranking down to 39th. This reflects the general difficulty faced by food exporting nations, given the high barriers against food products in many parts of the world.

BusinessNZ is a partner in the global survey which aims to promote open and transparent trading practices. More information on the Global Enabling Trade Report 2009 is on www.weforum.org/getr.

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