Peter Nicholl
The Government has been announcing a lot of ‘targets’ recently.
Targets ahead: Photo: Kampus Production. pexels.com
When I worked in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 10 years, the international community set lots of targets for Bosnian institutions. Some had a positive impact on performance, many were poorly designed and were ignored. Because of these diverse outcomes, I gave quite a lot of thought to target design.
The first characteristic a good target needs to have is to be clear and unambiguous. Targets like ‘improving peoples’ well-being’ don’t score very well on this criterion. The target should be challenging so that it stretches people. If the target is so ambitious as to be unachievable it won’t motivate people. They won’t be able to meet the target no matter how well they perform. It should also be clear who is responsible for trying to meet the target and how they will be held accountable. A good process for developing the target should involve those people in the process.
Peter Nicholl
One recently announced target was to double New Zealand’s exports over the next decade. How does that ‘target’ stack up against the criteria in the previous paragraph? It is certainly clear and unambiguous, so it ticks that box. It is also challenging – but is it an achievable target? Over the past decade, New Zealand’s exports grew by about 47 per cent. A target of 100 per cent growth seems to be bordering on the unachievable. I suspect it was the brainchild of a public relations firm rather than one developed by analysis of export capabilities.
It also was not clear who was going to be responsible for achieving the target and how they would be held accountable. Two areas that were described were trade agreements and tech industries. Two countries identified for improved trade agreements were China and India.
These countries are very important trading partners for us – but New Zealand is an incredibly small trading partner for them. For example, we send 22 per cent of our total exports to China. China sends 0.003 per cent of their total exports to New Zealand. They won’t give the same priority to trade agreements with New Zealand as we do. New Zealand sometimes forgets just how small we are on the global stage.
Encouraging growth in the emerging tech industries is a fine objective. But many other countries are also focusing on this emerging sector as their saviour.
One sector New Zealand clearly has significant comparative advantages is agriculture. It has been the mainstay of our exports for a long time and produces around 70 per cent of our exports.
Promoting other sectors is fine. But if New Zealand is going to have any chance of meeting the target of doubling our exports over the next decade, agriculture will have to continue to be at the forefront.
Have recent governments been prioritising and promoting this important sector? No. If that continues, New Zealand’s chances of meeting the 100 per cent export growth target are, in my view, zero.
