24/03/14 - New business visa to attract talent and create jobs

• Email a Friend

A new business visa will encourage migrants to set up high-quality businesses and create new jobs, according to Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse.

“Starting today, the new Entrepreneur Work Visa will help New Zealand attract talented, well-connected business people to invest and grow businesses in New Zealand,” Mr Woodhouse says.

“The Entrepreneur Work Visa operates under a new points-based system that will result in higher quality, more productive businesses. It replaces the Long-Term Business Visa, which was attracting too many low quality applications.”

Mr Woodhouse says the new Visa offers extra points for expanding or starting businesses outside of the Auckland region, which remains the primary destination for new migrants to New Zealand.

“The inclusion of regional points is designed to encourage new potential investors to settle and grow new businesses across the country, and to share the benefit of the extra jobs these businesses create.”

Points will also be offered for a number of other criteria including job creation, export potential, and a minimum capital investment of $100,000 will be required.

“The Entrepreneur Work Visa significantly raises the bar to attract more innovative, export focused businesses to support economic growth and create jobs for all New Zealanders

(Source Beehive, M Woodhouse)

Contact us today to see if you are eligible for this new Entrepreneur Work Visa

18/03/14 - BNZ lifts interest rates

• Email a Friend

BNZ has increased its mortgage rates today leaving Westpac the last major bank to make a move in the wake of the official cash rate rise.

According to interest.co.nz BNZ is to lift it TotalMoney floating rate from 5.74 per cent to 5.99 per cent and its standard floating rate from 5.99 per cent to 6.19 per cent.

The Reserve Bank increased the official cash rate last Thursday from 2.5 per cent to 2.75 per cent - the first increase in years.

ANZ was the first to respond announcing it would lift its rates on floating and flexible home loans by 25 basis points on the same day as the cash rate hike.

Its floating rate was lifted to 5.99 per cent and its flexible rate to 6.1 per cent.

Kiwibank and ASB followed last Friday.

Kiwibank increased its variable and revolving credit home loan rates from 5.65 per cent to 5.90 per cent and its offset mortgage rate from 5.25 per cent to 5.60 per cent.

While ASB increased its variable, orbit and orbit fast track rates from 5.75 per cent to 6 per cent.

Westpac has yet to make any announcement on changing its rates.

(Source Tamsyn Parker, NZ Herald)

07/03/14 - Woodhouse welcomes positive migration figures

• Email a Friend

Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse is welcoming two reports out today showing that net migration is continuing to increase as fewer people leave New Zealand and more people are permanently migrating.

The 13th annual Migration Trends and Outlook report confirms that 7900 more people moved to New Zealand in 2012/13 than left for overseas – reversing the situation of a year earlier when there was a net migration loss of 3200.

The report is predicting that permanent and long-term net migration will exceed 30,000 from the middle of this year as the economy continues to grow.

“This Government has worked hard to ensure that we have the right policies in place to make New Zealand an attractive place to visit, work and live,” Mr Woodhouse says.

“With an economy that grew 3.5 per cent in the year to September 2013, and that the OECD predicts will grow at 3.6 per cent this year, New Zealand is well placed to perform well in the global competition for investment and talent.

“These figures suggest that our policies are working with more New Zealanders choosing to stay and work in New Zealand, more returning home, and more immigrants choosing to come here and take advantage of everything we have to offer.”

The total number of people approved for temporary work visas in 2012/13 was 144,978, a rise of five per cent on the previous year with increases across most visa categories.

There was a two per cent increase in the number of people admitted under the Essential Skills Policy. This was the first annual rise in Essential Skills workers since the start of the global economic slowdown.

“New Zealand’s economic activity is expected to increase over the next three years and generate strong employment growth,” Mr Woodhouse says.

“We’re expecting that the number of Essential Skills workers will continue to rise as the Canterbury rebuild ramps up.”

The Migration Trends Key Indicators report – December 2013, which is also published today, shows that is already happening with a 19 per cent increase in the number of approved Essential Skills workers between July and December last year compared with the same period in 2012. There was an increase of 43 per cent in the Canterbury region.

Numbers were up in all the main work visa categories with a seven per cent increase in the number of people approved a temporary work visa. The number of international students approved to study in New Zealand went up 10 per cent.

“It’s heartening that with the intense global competition for international students that there has been an increase in the number coming to New Zealand.”

Resident visa numbers in the six months to December 2013 were also up from the same period in the previous year while the number of visitor arrivals increased eight per cent from the same period in the previous year.

China has become the top source country for visitor arrivals after Australia following significant growth in recent years. The growth from China is compensating for the lower numbers from traditional long-haul destinations such as the United Kingdom.

(Source Beehive)

04/03/14 - Launch of new business policies in March release

• Email a Friend

In December 2013,  the Government announced changes to business migration policies, as outlined our news item of 13 December.

The new Entrepreneur Work Visa, and updates to the re-named Entrepreneur Residence Visa have now been incorporated into operational policy which will be effective from 24 March 2014. 

The main changes are:

• The  Long Term Business Visa Category, which was closed in December 2013, has been replaced with the Entrepreneur Work Visa Category.
• The Entrepreneur Work Visa Category has incorporated requirements to attract high value businesses from experienced business people: a minimum capital investment requirement and requirement for applications to score points across a range of factors in order to be approved.
• The Entrepreneur Plus category is now closed, with the extra requirements included as an option in the new Entrepreneur Residence Category.
• Venture capital investments are now deemed to be acceptable investments under the Investor 1 and Investor 2 categories.

More information about the new policies, as well as applications and guides, will be available on our website once the new polices have been opened.

03/03/14 - Terms of trade at new 40-year high

• Email a Friend

New Zealand's terms of trade rose to a 40-year high for the second straight quarter in the final three months of 2013 as import prices fell more than export prices. On a volume measure, dairy products led exports higher while imports were unchanged.

Terms of trade, which measures the quantity of imports the country can buy with a set amount of exports, gained 2.3 per cent in the fourth quarter to the highest level since December 1973, according to Statistics New Zealand. It would need to climb another 3.5 per cent to match the all-time high recorded in the June quarter of 1973.

"The sky-high terms of trade will provide a key pillar of support to stronger growth in the New Zealand economy this year."
Westpac senior economist, Anne Boniface

The kiwi dollar recently traded at 83.73 US cents, up from 83.58 cents immediately before the figures were released at 10:45am. The gain in terms of trade exceeded the 2 per cent forecast in a Reuters survey.

Export prices fell 0.5 per cent, against expectations of a 1 per cent gain, while import prices declined 2.8 per cent versus a forecast 1 per cent decline. That follows an 8.9 per cent gain in export prices in the third quarter, led by a surge in milk powder and butter, and gains for forestry and meat.

Dairy export prices fell 1.1 per cent in the fourth quarter, the only decline recorded in 2013, while forestry dropped 2.1 per cent. Wool prices rose 8.7 per cent and meat was up 0.2 per cent.

Export volumes rose 9.7 per cent, led by a 23 per cent gain in dairy products, helping lift the actual value of dairy exports by 27 per cent even as prices fell. Meat volumes climbed 5.5 per cent, while petroleum products fell 24 per cent and forestry volumes were down 0.5 per cent. Import volume were unchanged as a 7.8 per cent decline for capital goods was offset by a 75 per cent jump in petrol and avgas volumes, a 2.1 per cent gain for intermediate goods and consumption goods, and a 6.2 per cent increase in cars.

The decline in import prices was led by a 3.8 per cent drop in mechanical machinery, a 3.7 per cent fall for chemicals and a 5.2 per cent decline for electrical machinery, with some of the drop attributable to a strong New Zealand dollar, the government statistician said.

"While we don't think the terms of trade can continue to head north forever, we do suspect a good chunk of the recent strength in the terms of trade reflects structural changes in the drivers of New Zealand's key exports - in particular, increased demand for New Zealand's commodity exports from China and other emerging economies," said Westpac's Anne Boniface

The terms of trade for services such as tourism rose 1.5 per cent, with a 0.2 per cent gain in services export prices and a 1.3 per cent decline for imports.

(Source NZ Herald)

24/02/14 - Immigrant sells WhatsApp to Facebook for $19bn

• Email a Friend

Jan Koum, a Ukrainian who settled in the US, has sold his WhatsApp mobile app to Facebook for $19bn. Mr Koum, 37, left Ukraine for the US when with his mother he was 16. His story is a classic 'rags-to-riches' American dream, immigrant tale.

Koum and his mother, both Jewish, left Ukraine in 1993 because of anti-Semitism. When they arrived in California in 1993, they were so poor that they relied on government hand-outs and 'food stamps' for survival. He taught himself computer programming using cheap, second-hand books.

After leaving university, he worked for ten years at Yahoo! before setting up WhatsApp with his business partner Brian Acton who had worked with him at Yahoo! and had looked after him after his mother died in 2000.

Some have questioned the business sense of paying so much for WhatsApp. The Economist magazine says that it is part of an ongoing 'turf war' between the tech industry giants; companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. Viber, an app which provides a similar service was bought by Japanese internet company Rakuten recently for only $900m. Viber has 290m users.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, said that the deal made sense because WhatsApp is the fastest growing texting app. It has 450m users, most of whom use the service every day.

Facebook paid $4bn in cash, $12bn in Facebook shares with a further $3bn in Facebook shares for WhatsApp staff (including Mr Koum) in three years. Mr Koum is thought to own 45% of the company and so is now worth in the region of $6bn.

Mr Koum has clearly not forgotten his humble beginnings in the US. He signed the deal with Facebook at a former Social Services building, now closed, where he once went to get his food stamps.'You can continue to enjoy the service for a nominal fee and you can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication. There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise'.

(Source Workpermit)

14/02/14 - Social enterprises get start-up cash

• Email a Friend

More than $1 million of Government funding has been set aside to build start-up social enterprises.

Community and Voluntary Sector Minister Jo Goodhew today announced $1.27 million would go to supporting organisations that furthered human and environmental well-being, but using commercial models to generate income.

"This government recognises that by combining social goals and business methods, social enterprise has the potential to play a significant role in New Zealand's social innovation and economic development," Goodhew said.

The money will be administered through the Hikurangi Foundation - a charity dedicated to incubating social enterprises.

"Over the next two years the Hikurangi Foundation will receive $1.12 million to help build a national social enterprise incubation and development service to provide expert support, resources, and one-on-one advice from bases in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch," she said

An extra grant would also be given to Hikurangi to fund a pilot programme supporting 10 new social enterprise initiatives.

Private energy company Contact Energy would also be giving funds to the project.

(Source Fairfax NZ News)

10/02/14 - More migrants would benefit all

• Email a Friend

Raising net migration by 40,000 people a year would boost the economy by almost $410 a person per year over 10 years, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) says.

More migrants would benefit the economy in several ways, including providing businesses with new skills and helping them grow, the institute said in its report titled Migrants Increase Our Incomes.

More immigration would also increase innovation and competition while lowering the average cost per person of expensive infrastructure such as motorways, NZIER said.

NZIER senior economist Dr Kirdan Lees said the report drew on economic, immigration and populationfigures since 1945.

The figure of 40,000 net migrants was chosen as a baseline for the study because it was significantly higher than the average net annual immigration flow of 15,000 that New Zealand has experienced over the past 12 years.

Lees said the present government target of 135,000-150,000 immigrants over three years did not take population outflows into account and appeared to be "driven much more by perception of what is politically tenable than economics".

Lees acknowledged that politically, there was "no easy time to increase immigration".

"In bad times migrants are seen as taking jobs and increasing unemployment even though there is little evidence that immigrants negatively affect either the wages or employment opportunities of New Zealand-born workers," he said.

"In boom times some worry about the pressure immigration seems to put on housing, infrastructure and publicly-funded services like schools and healthcare."

But Lees said NZIER's research showed that immigration raised incomes above any requirement to boost infrastructure.

"The real question is improving flexibility in infrastructure," he said.

"If it is poor it needs fixing, not sheltering."

(Source Michael Foreman, Sunday Star Times)

04/02/14 - Government to resettle Syrian refugees

• Email a Friend

Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse has announced the government will resettle up to 100 refugees in need of urgent protection from the situation in Syria.

“The humanitarian situation in Syria is deteriorating by the day and the UNHCR has called on the international community for assistance,” Mr Woodhouse says.

“New Zealand has already provided $12.5 million to help those displaced by the conflict in Syria. This resettlement offer adds to this assistance and reflects the Government’s commitment to fulfilling its international humanitarian responsibilities.

“New Zealand’s annual refugee quota includes places reserved for emergency resettlement from large-scale crisis situations, if required, for exactly the type of situation we are seeing in Syria.”

Mr Woodhouse says that as the emergency places are included as part of the overall refugee quota, they have already been budgeted for and do not represent extra cost to the government.

Selected refugees will be interviewed and undergo full screening and security assessment before being accepted. They will enter a six-week reception programme at Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre before being resettled in the community.

Mr Woodhouse says the first Syrian refugees are expected to arrive in New Zealand during the second half of 2014.

(Source Beehive)

30/01/14 - NZ inbound net migration holds up as Aussie exodus slows

• Email a Friend

New Zealand's inbound migration stayed elevated in December as the number of new migrants continued to rise and fewer locals packed up to cross the Tasman.

The country gained a seasonally adjusted 2,800 net new migrants in December, largely unchanged from a month earlier, according to Statistics New Zealand. Seasonally adjusted, about 2,600 people left New Zealand for Australia, in line with a month earlier, while the number of new arrivals rose to 8,300 from 8,200 in November.

On an annual basis, New Zealand gained a net 22,500 new migrants, compared to an outflow of 1,200 a year earlier. That's the biggest inflow of migrants since 2003, when the country gained a net 34,900 migrants.

Inbound migration is seen as one of the factors driving New Zealand's accelerating economic momentum as it fuels a bubbling property market.

The Reserve Bank today signalled an interest rate hike is imminent as it looks to head off inflationary pressures, in an economy that's expected to grow at an annual pace of about 3.5 percent this year.

Australia was the biggest contributor of new migrants, with 19,500 permanent and long-term arrivals in 2013, a gain of 31 percent from a year earlier. That was followed by 14,000 people from the UK, down 0.4 percent from 2012 and 8,200 people from China, up 5.9 percent.

Today's figures also showed a 4.9 percent rise in short-term visitor arrivals to 381,900 in December from the same month in 2012, for an annual gain of 6 percent to 2.72 million. Increasing numbers of Australian and US visitors offset declining numbers of Chinese in December.

(Source NZ Herald)