Australia, US biggest destinations for NZ investment

By NZPA

Friday 16th August 2002

Australia and the United States are the biggest destinations of New Zealand investment overseas, Statistics New Zealand said today.

New statistics also showed Australia was New Zealand's most important source and destination of direct investment, while the US was the most important destination of portfolio and other investment abroad (company shareholdings of less than 10 percent and debt securities).

Issuing its March year balance of payments and investment figures, the department said that as of March 31, New Zealanders had a total of $79.1 billion invested overseas, but more than twice as much was invested here by overseas investors -- $171.4 billion.

Over half the value of foreign investment in New Zealand was from three countries. Australia invested the most ($36.7 billion), followed by Britain ($31.7 billion) and the US ($29.1 billion).

As far as New Zealanders investments overseas went, New Zealanders placed $25 billion worth of funds in the United States, and $16.3 billion in Australia, which between them accounted for 52.4 percent of total funds.

Britain was the third largest investment destination with $8.8 billion, and the most significant source of foreign portfolio investment.

New Zealand industries with the largest amounts of overseas investments continued to be the finance, insurance and manufacturing sectors.

Balance of payments records remained unrevised, showing that for the year ended March, the current account balance had virtually halved from a deficit of $5.284 billion to $2.672 billion.

The balance of payments is a record of the value of New Zealand's transactions in goods, services, income and transfers with the rest of the world, and the changes in New Zealand's financial claims on, and liabilities to, the rest of the world.

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