Economy
The sub-national GDP of the Bay of Plenty region was estimated at US$6.689 billion in 2003, 5% of New Zealand's national GDP.
Agriculture, natural resources and tourism are the major industries in the Bay of Plenty. 96 per cent of the region is defined as 'rural', with 22% of land usage representing farm land and 38% representing nature reserve land. The most common agricultural land uses in the region are horticulture, dairy, grazing and sheep farming. Notable horticultural crops include kiwifruit, apples and avocadoes. The region also has an abundance of coastal, forestry and geothermal resources. Forestry emerged as a vital industry in the 1950s, with Radiata Pine being planted during the early 20th century. Forestry in the region is commercially planted and managed, mostly using planted foreign tree species, and timber is sent to the Port of Tauranga for export. Geothermal activity is a source of tourism in the region, and geothermal energy is emerging as a major regional source of electricity. Tourism is the other notable industry in the Bay of Plenty, accounting for 15% of the region's GDP from March 2000 to 2004. The Bay of Plenty received over 645,000 tourists in 2003, equivalent to one in three visitors to New Zealand coming to the region. Rotorua is a popular destination for international visitors, in particular the surrounding geothermal areas and Māori cultural centres. Tauranga is a popular domestic tourism destination, but becoming very popular internationally.
Overall economic growth in the Bay of Plenty averaged 2.1% between March 2000 and 2004, compared with the national rate of 3.5%, although per capita real GDP growth in the region in the five years to March 2003 matched the national growth rate at an averaged 2.3%. In the 2006 Census, the median annual income in the Bay of Plenty was $22,600, below the national median of $24,400. Further, 45.4% of people aged 15 years or older earned an annual income of less than $20,000, compared with 43.2% of people nationally. Unemployment in the region was at 6.1% of people 15 years or older, compared with 5.1% nationally.
Read more about this topic: Bay Of Plenty Region
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)