| Foreign direct investment (ownership of
companies) in New Zealand increased from
$9.7 billion in 1989 to $50.7 billion in
1997 - an increase of over 500%. |
| Foreign owners now control nearly 65% of the share
market. In 1989, the figure was 19%. |
| In 1997 alone, the Overseas Investment Commission approved
foreign investment totalling $5.2 billion (the
Commission only has to approve company takeovers involving $10 million or
more). [latest available statistics] |
| The area of rural land sold to foreigners has increased from
42,000 hectares in 1991 to 62,000 in 1997. |
| The biggest foreign owners of New Zealand are:
Australia, the US, Canada, Britain,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and
China. |
| Transnational corporations (TNCs) are making
massive profits out of New Zealand. For the 1997/98 financial
year, US-owned Telecom made an $820 million profit.
It pays out never less than 70% of annual profits as dividends to its
owners, and some years more than 90%. TNC profits can
truly be called New Zealand's biggest invisible export and have a major
deleterious effect on our balance of payments. |
| Foreign "investment", in the great majority of cases,
is actually a takeover, not investment at
all. |
| Foreign investors are not big employers - they
only employ 18% of the workforce. Politicians and media
"experts" are peddling the myth that "one in three" New Zealanders owe their
jobs to foreign investment. We have challenged this
figure - resounding silence has been the answer.
So the fact remains - at most, only one in five or six
New Zealanders owe their jobs to foreign investment. Foreign
ownership does not guarantee more jobs. In fact, it
quite often adds to unemployment. US-owned Telecom is making
40% of its New Zealand workforce redundant. |
| Foreign ownership does nothing to improve New Zealand's foreign
debt problem. In 1984, total private and public
foreign debt stood at $16 billion. In 1998, it is
$99 billion - despite a decade of public asset sales and
takeovers. |
| Ownership means political power. The finance
markets constantly threaten to move their money out if policies are enacted
that they disapprove of. |
| 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. |
