Junket?
OPINION: The Hound notes that the Taxpayers’ Union recently revealed that the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) spent more than $125,000 for its presence at this year’s Mystery Creek Fieldays.
The Fieldays 2015 Economic Impact report reveals the events contributes $166m to the GDP of New Zealand and $53m to Waikato.
Dr Warren Hughes of the University of Waikato Management School's Institute of Business Research and Hughes Economics independently prepared the report.
"When preparing the impact study, we look at three sources — visitor spending, equipment spending and organisation spending," says Hughes.
The decrease in both Waikato and New Zealand's revenue and GDP of 13-14% has been attributed to the dairy forecast.
"Unfortunately, as we came into Fieldays, we knew there was bad news ahead in the dairy sector and equipment purchase fell directly, and the overall total price fell accordingly," say Hughes.
However, he says all other sectors, including sheep, beef, horticulture and wine, are on the up.
"We're thrilled with the economic impacts of Fieldays 2015," says NZ National Fieldays Society CEO Jon Calder.
Calder says the event is "more than just four days in June".
"We're incredibly proud to have such relationships with our stakeholders and customers to be able to contribute so significantly to New Zealand's primary sector."
China’s Ambassador Wang Xiaolong says bilateral economic and trade cooperation between China and New Zealand has made significant and rapid progress.
South Waikato farm manager Ben Purua’s amazing transformation from gang life to milking cows was rewarded with the Ahuwhenua Young Maori Farmer award last night.
Bankers have been making record profits in the last few years, but those aren’t the only records they’ve been breaking, says Federated Farmers vice president Richard McIntyre.
The 2023-24 season has been a roller coaster ride for Waikato dairy farmers, according to Federated Farmers dairy section chair, Mathew Zonderop.
Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director general Ray Smith says job cuts announced this morning will not impact the way the Ministry is organised or merge business units.
Scales Corporation is acquiring a number of orchard assets from Bostock Group.
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