Posted on 24-7-2002

Who Owns New Zealand?

from www.cafca.org.nz



Foreign direct investment (ownership of companies) in New Zealand
increased from $9.7 billion in 1989 to $49.3 billion in 2001 - an
increase of more than 400%. Foreign owners now control 47% of the share
market. In 1989, the figure was 19%.


In 2001, the Overseas Investment Commission (OIC) approved foreign
investment totalling $1.2 billion, the lowest since 1993 (it approved
$4.1 billion in 2000). Only company takeovers involving $50 million or
more need OIC approval, except those involving land or fishing quotas.
Until 1999, the threshold was $10m.


In 2001, the OIC approved the nett sale of 37,368 hectares of rural land
to foreigners, also the lowest since 1993 (in 2000, it approved the sale
of 93,000 hectares).


Statistics NZ figures, as of March 2001, list the biggest foreign owners
of New Zealand as, in order: Australia, Netherlands, US, UK, Singapore,
Hong Kong and Japan (Canada’s figure was listed as "confidential").


Transnational corporations (TNCs) make massive profits out of New
Zealand. For the 2000/01 financial year, US-owned Telecom made an $643
million profit. It paid out 50% as dividends to its owners. Previously,
the percentage of annual profits paid out as dividends went as high as
98% for the 1998/99 year. From 1990 - 99, TNCs made $27.5 billion
profits: only 24% was reinvested, and in some years more was sent
overseas than was earned.


The great majority of foreign "investment" is actually a takeover, not
creating new assets.


Foreign investors are not big employers - they only employ 18% of the
workforce. Foreign ownership does not guarantee more jobs. In fact, it
quite often adds to unemployment. TNCs have made tens of thousands
jobless.


Foreign ownership does nothing to improve New Zealand's foreign debt
problem. In 1984, total private and public foreign debt stood at $16
billion. As of March 2001, it was $123 billion, more than 100% of NZ’s
Gross Domestic Product, despite all of the asset sales and takeovers.


Ownership means political power. Foreign control means recolonisation,
but by company this time, not country.


Nearly everything that has been done to New Zealanders in the past decade
has been done to "make the New Zealand economy attractive to foreign
investment". This is what it all means to ordinary New Zealanders - we
are involuntary competitors in the race to the bottom.



CAFCA, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa, Box 2258,
Christchurch, New Zealand.