SME Stream Weekly Wrap - 06 March

Kia ora and welcome to this mestream weekly wrap. My name is Willemeneer Ok, but I'm

here to wrap up all of the latest business news you need to know.

Now, as a small business owner myself, I know what it's like to do it all. It's hard

enough trying to keep up with your own day to day, but let alone what's happening with

the economy and how it affects you. But don't worry because that's where I come in,

pulling together everything you need to know, all may have missed, into a short, digestible

audio snack. So you can stay informed all while focusing on the tasks that matter most

to your business. This week, many are counting the human cost of the Middle East complex,

but there's also an economic one too, so what does that mean for us? Back here, job numbers

are on the rise, and more people are accessing their cubies over for hardship reasons than

in first homes. Plus, is AI really on the fast track to taking our white collar jobs?

To the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand.

Stay sheltered, don't leave your home, it's very dangerous outside, bombs will be dropping

everywhere. Those bombs haven't just been sending shockwaves on the ground in the Middle

East, but also across the world, a job that's been felt by the world's economy too. Our economic

recovery could now be at risk, resulting from the disruption in the strait of hormones.

Westpac Modeling shows if it was to stay close for a month, it would put inflation over

4% and not half a percent of our GDP. Senior economist Kelly Eckhold says we're much

more vulnerable than Australia when it comes to energy.

Iran has been threatening to set fire to any tankers passing through the strait of hormones.

Choking supply of much of the world's oil. Eckhold says fuel prices are also likely to keep rising

as a result. We've already seen the oil price go up 6 to 8 percent, exchange rate has fallen,

a cent or so as well, so we're heading down towards 59 cents. So that probably means another

8 cents or so on the pump reasonably soon.

Meet industry, Association Chair Nathan Geiss says red meat exporters are having difficulties

too with most golf ports closed. We need to try and, I guess, move product into other markets.

Some of this is chilled meat, so it may need to be frozen down.

The domino effect of that disruption to supply chains are delays and an increased cost for goods,

which ultimately means inflation. You can catch all of the latest reaction to the conflict in the

space stream. Despite the conflict, New Zealand's exports are booming, all driven by rising global

demand for food. New trade figures show exports surged $29.2 billion in the December quarter,

up 2.2 billion on a year earlier. Two-way trade also leapt just over 61 billion.

Business NZ CEO Catherine Rich says the country produces enough food to feed around 50 million

people. Job numbers are on the rise, but the recovery is slow with the numbers still down

on a year ago. The latest stats NZ data shows filled jobs in January were 0.2% higher than December,

but still 0.2% lower than January last year. Constructions employing 2.8% fewer

people than a year ago, manufacturing jobs are down 1.6%. But job numbers have recovered

in public administration, healthcare and education.

Financial Services is now one of our biggest money makers. A report by the Financial Services

Council shows the sector is now the seventh largest by GDP contributing more than $16 billion

to the economy last year. It's also grown by close to 10% in the past five years.

The Financial Services Council's CEO, Kirk Hopes, says the sector is not just growing,

it's also supporting households directly. If you look at, say for example,

health and life they pay out $4 billion in claims to NZers every year,

so those are financial and health resilience tools that NZers are getting benefit of.

The government is answering a rallying cry from rural workers wanting to access their

Kiwi Saver to purchase their first property. Some rural workers have been locked out of using

Kiwi Saver to buy their first home or farm, because their jobs require them to live

an employer-provided housing. The government's introducing a suite of changes,

meaning rural workers will now be able to use their Kiwi Saver to buy their first home or farm.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis sees hundreds if not thousands of people will benefit.

The issue of unfairness, we serve their voices loud and clear,

this is not a change that's come from Wellington, this is a change that

responds directly to the voices of people living in our farming community.

Farmer Matt Wyeth says it's great to see changes that will help the younger generation

into the next farm. Because farmland is so expensive, when you get to a letter,

there's a couple of runs missing on the letter, so now it's made some small steps for them to

help get them to leg up, not a hand out. More people are dipping into their Kiwi Saver

funds for hardship then for housing. The latest in land-revenue Kiwi Saver early withdrawal

figures show more than half were prompted by financial hardships. January saw four and a half

thousand withdrawals for hardship and three thousand for first-home purchases.

Tourists are splashing the cash on our shores with overall spending hitting $46.6 billion

up 3.3% on last year. International visitors spend $18.1 billion, a 7% jump,

and domestic travelers spend $28.5 billion up just 1%. International tourism now makes up

17% of New Zealand's total exports slightly down on last year. Overall tourism continues to

account for 7.7% of GDP unchanged from 2024. Tourism Minister Louise Upton says Chinese

arrivals remain below pre-COVID levels, but have surged recently driven by last year's policy

changes. There's fears the electricity authorities rules won't drive down bills for consumers.

Power companies will have to simplify their billing language and tell customers if they're on

the best deal they provide. Power company Electric Kiwi's chief executive who we abirt says the

changes will give people more information. She says though it doesn't tackle the heart of the

problem. AI is everywhere and for hardware giants like Nvidia it's helping them to boom,

whereas for software providers like Salesforce, bust could be a reality down the track.

There is, of course, a lot of talk about how AI could begin to automate white collar jobs,

leaving the real people with labor-focused blue collar rolls to make ends meet. So,

is that Doomsday scenario likely to become a reality anytime soon?

The debate is now firmly sitting like, is it going to disrupt things so much that there's

a big sort of unemployment levels, a recession that gets caused for it. We can't get these white

collar people retrained to work somewhere or will it go at a pace or we've got time for people

to re-skill, work with AI, come up with new companies and all of a sudden jobs get created with new

companies. And I think the answer is going to be a bit of both. And how we are viewing it is

increasingly, I think there is going to be some disruption to the white collar workforce.

You can listen to the full chat with Andrew Curtain, tech sector specialist at Milford

Asset Management on the shared lunch podcast in the SME stream.

It's 2026, but the gender pay gap is still very much a real thing. And while it's slowly

closing, it's still leaving many of the hardworking women in the workforce without.

And this week's episode of Make It Happens, serial entrepreneur EOLO

dives into what's driving the gap and how to get around it.

Most companies operate under what I call salary secrecy. So they don't share information

about what people earn, and they often have policies that discourage or even forbid employees

from discussing their salaries with other people. Now, this secrecy allows inequality to thrive

because you can't negotiate effectively if you don't know what the market rate actually is.

As I try to buy a car, when only the dealer knows what the cars are worth. So you're always

going to get a bad deal. You can listen to the full chat in the SME stream.

And that's it for the weekly wrap. We'll be back again next Friday with all of the latest

business news and of course the best bits in the SME stream.