The population rises to about 6.2m in 2050 so the per capita income growth rate is around 1.2 percent p.a.
However, the Treasury does not provide a breakdown of how much each sector – such as farming, manufacturing, services and whole lot more – produces.
I take it that the farm projections assume that, for various reasons, farm productivity is near a peak and cannot increase much further.
Assuming that we are not competing with East Asian manufacturing – which would mean similar wage levels – we have to go for high-quality, technologically advanced, products.
A larger population would not improve the prospects of manufacturing much, given that we are so distant from everywhere else.
Manufacturing exports increasing slightly faster than the economy may be feasible, although the probability is that the whole of the manufacturing sector will expand slower than the economy as a whole.
Unfortunately the model treats the service sector as a single activity so there is no indication what, among the diversity of services, the model has in mind when it projects a trebling-plus of service exports over the third of the century.
Is that feasible? To answer, let us ignore the gloomier scenarios that a world permanently riddled by Covid-SARS might suggest.
Ultimately, then, the question is what population can the New Zealand resource base sustain? It is possible that under the economic assumptions of the C-Plan projection, the population of New Zealand will be smaller in 2050 than it is today.
We can, of course, leave answering such questions to mañana, allowing the potential crisis of an inability to earn our way in the world to creep up on us.
However these emissions are not included in the New Zealand emission totals, which follow the UNFCCC guidelines of accounting for and reporting emissions.
Brian Easton, an independent scholar, is an economist, social statistician, public policy analyst and historian.
Good article Brian ,you have painted the likely scenario around the increase in the services sector, I would like to see the reason for the very large drop in the food processing sector explained .
CWBW there is actually a lot of merit to that.
I would think though that there is still some current dairy land that could be converted to things like hops or vineyards, possibly a bit of the sheep and beef farm land as well.
An advanced small economy to prosper, like Taiwan, Singapore and Swizerland, must focus on specialized services and manufacturing.
Whichever the path will be the “right” future I am not sure, what I know for sure is, we can’t just rely on tourism and international education–the existing service exports, which are decimated anyway.
The 2017 figures that Brian quotes here do not seem to align well with current stats – for example that around 83% of merchandise exports come from the primary industries, as reported by MPI .
As an aside, I notice the UK is already walking back from net zero, slowly but surely, as they realise the cost both financially and geopolitically.