NZers will be in favour of more foreign investment - Joyce

Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce told TV One’s Q+A programme that his Government wants more foreign investment in New Zealand companies - and he thinks New Zealanders will be in favour of it.

"We have a programme where we’re seeking to attract investment, not just international investment but domestic investment as well into our productive companies and the food industry and ICT and high-tech manufacturing. That will continue to go on, and the more investment these companies attract, then the more ability they have to get out there and compete and win on the world stage."

" New Zealanders ultimately want to see jobs and incomes for them and their families and their kids in New Zealand. And there’ll be lots of growth in the world over the next 20 or 30 years, and the only question is where it is. It’s sort of like a geographic play. We can have more investment in this country or some of that investment could instead be in Australia or in Singapore or in Jakarta or wherever. So if we welcome that investment, if we attract it, we bring it here, that means more jobs, higher incomes, capital invested in our companies. And I think as long as New Zealanders see that and understand that and can see that it works for New Zealand, they’ll be in favour of it because ultimately what they’re really looking for is for the chance for their kids to be successful and grow up and bring up their own families in this country. And we’re seeing that with the shift in migration back to New Zealand that people see that future."

Mr Joyce also said the Government is working on ways to speed up decisions by the Overseas Investment Office:

"We are doing some work on speeding it up - more resources for the office and so on, which is being talked about. In this particular transaction [Lochinver], it was quite complex, I understand, because the ownership of the purchaser and the ways- which companies were involved is actually quite a complex arrangement, and there was quite a lot of requests for information going back to the purchaser as well. So I can understand Gary’s frustration, but it’s also a two-way street. And as I understand it, there was some extra information required that took a bit of time to turn up. More broadly, I think we would like to get the process through quickly and get more to yes and no on a more rapid basis for all transactions, but we can’t do it for all of them because some of them are more complex, but we are looking, as I said, at ways we can do that."

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1. Repeated Sunday evening at 11:35pm. Streamed live at www.tvnz.co.nz