From Your Mayor - Wisdom from Irish Wizard

Do the Irish know something that we don't about New Zealand?

Did anyone else find themselves wondering why former Heinz head Tony O'Reilly is busy sinking money and time into New Zealand at a time when some sectors would have us believe things have never been so bad?

I was so intrigued at this Irish magnate swimming against the tide that I went along to hear him when he was here in Christchurch.

He had a rather more worldly view of recent change in this country. He said while there had been some shifts in policy, New Zealand still had great prospects, provided we could pull ourselves out of the funk some people seem determined to put us in.

He didn't understand what had happened to our usual optimism as a people but his advice was simply to get over it and get on with it.

Lately I have been talking to groups like Rotary about what is happening here in our local economy. Nationally, because of our strong export focus, Canterbury plays a much more important role as an indicator than many people are aware.

Some key areas of activity the Council are involved with on your behalf are showing stunningly good results. Pride of place would go to Christchurch Airport, where the international terminal has just racked up an impressive first by dealing with over 1 million travellers in a year. In the year to 30 June, the new terminal "processed" 1,066,000 people, either arriving, departing or in transit - an increase of 9.8 per cent on the 12 months to the end of June 1999.

The airport company expects revenue to rise from $51.4 million in 1998/99 to $57.6 million in 2000/2001. Strong activity also led annual average growth to a new high, with an increase of 11.2% for the year ended July 2000. There are similar strong figures when you add up the totals for export cargo through our port and airport.

In June 142,644 tonnes of cargo were shipped overseas by sea and air, worth a total of $349.7M.

This brought annual average growth to 10.8% for the year ended June 2000 - the highest growth rate in recent years.

Healthy growth figures like these indicate the economic outlook for Christchurch and Canterbury is good.

www.christchurchmayor.org.nz