WELLINGTON: New Zealand earned $2.5 billion more from exports than we spent on imports during the year ended December 2015, Statistics New Zealand said today. Total exports of goods and services were $69.3 billion for 2015, while imports totalled $66.9 billion.
Total exports rose $1.9 billion from 2014, driven by a $2.3 billion rise in spending by international visitors and a $895 million increase in exports of meat products in 2015. Dairy exports fell $3.0 billion in the latest year.
“Although dairy exports were lower across the year, it has remained our top export earner,” international statistics senior manager Jason Attewell said. “However, earnings from other export industries and markets have increased in significance, picking up the shortfall in dairy.”
The growth in earnings from meat and travel was driven by our key export markets – including China, the United States, and the European Union (EU). Spending on personal travel by visitors from China has increased $1.4 billion since 2011, reaching $2.2 billion in 2015. Visitors from Australia spent $1.9 billion on personal travel in 2015.
For the year ended December 2015, the EU was our largest source of imports, totalling $12.1 billion, followed by Australia ($11.3 billion) and China ($10.4 billion).
New Zealand’s largest import expense during 2015 was electrical machinery and equipment from China. “The rise in electrical machinery and equipment was mostly due to consumer electronics such as mobile phones,” Mr Attewell said. “In recent years, cars from Japan or the EU had been our top import.”
