By Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister and MP for Botany
Good day and welcome to 2026. I hope you managed to take pleasure in an important Christmas and New 12 months, surrounded by household and mates.
I acquired to take pleasure in spending a while off in Auckland over the break, having fun with the climate and planning forward for the yr.
Nationwide will hold working exhausting this yr on fixing the fundamentals and constructing the longer term – and a key a part of that’s making certain our economic system retains rising.
We’ve made nice progress in simply over two years – inflation is again inside the band and the economic system is rising, and successive cuts to the OCR imply Kiwis are saving hundreds of {dollars} a yr on mortgage repayments.
Simply earlier than Christmas I introduced we’ve secured a free commerce settlement with India – that will probably be a mammoth enhance to our economic system.
It’s a landmark cope with the world’s quickest rising large economic system that may create alternatives for jobs, exports and development for all New Zealanders.
A rising economic system means extra alternatives proper right here at residence. It means extra jobs and better wages.
It means we will ship extra roads, faculties and hospitals and have higher, extra responsive, public companies.
Commerce is the engine room of our economic system. The extra we promote abroad, the higher that Kiwi exporters can assist extra jobs and better wages.
One in 4 New Zealand jobs are linked to commerce, and we all know exporting corporations pay their employees larger incomes than non-exporting corporations, and that’s why my Authorities set an formidable purpose to double exports in 10 years.
As a result of the higher our exporters do, the higher New Zealand’s economic system does.
We’ll proceed to drag each lever and work each relationship to proceed rising this economic system – and I stay up for conserving you up to date all year long.
