Local economic results show improvement
Hutt City's annual economic development reporting has recently been released showing a marked improvement in the city's performance in the year to March 2011.
Though there have been small declines in FTE jobs and the total number of businesses, the report from Business and Economic Research Limited (BERL) estimates GDP has improved due to increased labour productivity.
Council’s City Development Manager Nicholas Lucas says “it’s also heartening to see improvement in high-value and exporting business activity after a few tough years. The challenge now is to keep improving the fortunes of these sectors and the benefits will flow through to other parts of the economy."
The report includes for the first time detailed monitoring of the Hutt Valley’s high technology sectors.
“The new monitoring of our high technology sector, which shows a moderate decline over the last decade in FTEs jobs but a significant increase in businesses over the same timeframe, will be used as a baseline measure of our economic development focus on Technology Valley initiatives.”