Executive
Forum 2001
Montreux, Switzerland
26-29 September 2001
Interviews
New
Zealand: an alignment of strategy to stay on the global
screen
Michael Hannah, Manager, Government Relations & Policy and
Board Secretary, The New Zealand Trade Development Board (Trade
New Zealand) |
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Question: How did New Zealand
develop its trade promotion organization towards the virtual
team approach?
Hannah: I
guess you could say we have evolved from an organization that
was set up first of all to encourage domestic-based industries
into exporting (from the 1970s-80s onwards because before then
we had a very protected economy). We moved on from that to
realizing that while we had an export base that was wider than
it used to be, we also needed to develop more value from those
exports. We recognized that there are gaps: developing new
businesses, developing technologically savvy businesses, and
helping us develop our markets internationally. This led New
Zealand to look at the three economic development agencies that
government has a hand in – Trade New Zealand on the
internationalizing side, Technology New Zealand where there is
assistance to develop new technologies, and a new agency called
Industry New Zealand, which is to help domestic capability for
the set-up of businesses. You can see them as a continuum:
development, new technologies and international trade. The
government got the three agencies together and said: if you
align the strategy and the activity that you are carrying out,
perhaps we can develop greater growth for New Zealand industry.
So we are starting now to see an alignment of strategy in these
three organizations. We are separately funded still, we have
separate boards, but we share a minister, we share some
strategies, and we are starting to share activities.
Would it be fair to say that it
reflects very much how ideas have changed about how government
should be involved in trade promotion and what a
government-funded organization should be doing?
Hannah: New
Zealand in the past 20 years has gone through a change in
philosophy – from more than 20 years ago when government was
fairly heavily involved, we went through some fairly famous
reforms in the mid-80s where government pulled back completely.
Through the 1980s and 90s with government taking a hands-off
approach but ensuring that the country became more
cost-competitive, more competitive in design and that sort of
thing, we have moved on to now realizing that we are still a
very small country, we’ve still got very small businesses,
very small markets at home, that government still has a role to
play, particularly in terms of alignment, co-ordination and
promotion. Though we are a small country we need to be on the
radar screens of the world.
You must see the whole gamut of
New Zealand’s experience reflected in the case studies you
hear at the Executive Forum. What do you get back from the
Forum?
Hannah:
Despite being labelled as a developed country, we face many of
the same challenges as developing countries. It sounds facile to
say that, but New Zealand is a country that is surprisingly
dependent still on commodities, that knows it has to expand its
range. Listening to the representative from Cambodia, I noticed
he was saying exactly those same things. We can relate to that.
We look to other countries as well – Sweden, Ireland, Finland,
Singapore – and say, look what they have done with their
resources, much as the other nations that are classed as
developing. With regard to issues like co-ordination, we have to
note that in New Zealand we have to work with institutions with
a lot of history of their own in the way they operate. For
developing countries, if they haven’t developed those
institutions to quite the same degree, co-ordination should come
a lot easier.
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