Minister details aid to small businesses

Press, 2 August 1979, Page 7

Minister details aid to small businesses

PA Wellington An assertion by the Leader of the Labour Party (Mr Rowling) that small businesses were the “lost tribe’’ of New Zealand’s commercial sector, and were ignored in over-all economic planning has been denied by the Minister of Trade and Industry (Mr Adams-Schneider).

The needs and problems of small businesses were “certainly not” being ignored by a Government that held reward for private enterprise and initiative as “one of its dearest principles,” he said. Mr Rowling made the comment earlier this week in an address to a combined Jaycees meeting at Mount Maunganui. Mr Adams-Schneider referred to the help given by the small business agency, the Productivity Centre and the applied technology programme of the Development Finance Corporation. Since it was set up in June, 1978, the Small Business Agency had provided a counselling, diagnostic, and referral service to small business people. Some 2300 inquiries had been received in the first 10 months, Mr Adams-Schneider said. The Government had recognised its expanding role by giving the agency $650,000 for this year, and by approving a new area

office in Tauranga to deal with the growing volume of queries from the Bay of Plenty area. The Department of Trade and Industry’s Productivity Centre programme of liaison with, and seminars, workshops and publications for, the smaller business had been well received, he said. Through the availability of its films and publications, supplemented by the work of the industry liaison officers in the four main cities, the centre provided a contact point and medium of aid to the smaller business person. The Government was also providing $2.5M this year to the applied technology programme for helping the development of new and worth-while projects by smaller business. It was ensuring that the programme had sufficient resources to enable innovative and promising ideas shown by many smaller New Zealand businesses to come to fruition, Mr Adams-Schneider said. The president of the New Zealand Chambers of Commerce (Mr D. Fine), said that leaders in the 28 chambers of commerce small business groups throughout the country were giving the particular

help the small business person wanted. “They are doing it without Government assistance and at a fraction of the cost of the money being spent by a variety of quasi-Government bodies, with sometimes duplicating function,” he said. “Those in business, or who have been in business, can best provide small business operators with the help they want in. solving their problems.” Businessmen generally did not want formalised coursetype instruction and education in improving the efficiency of their business. “The greatest form of assistance for small businessmen would be for the Government to get off their backs, and off its own backside to do something to reduce inflation which is choking all businesses,” Mr Fine said. The high interest rates referred to by Mr Rowling in advocating a stable money market were one direct result of inflation. Neither political party had shown much willingness to get to grips with this situation, for instance by reducing Government spending.