Small-business reassurance

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 20

Small-business reassurance

The Minister of Labour (Mr Bolger) yesterday rejected accusations that the Government was ignoring the interests of small businesses.

He told Christchurch Rotarians that because the news media had given so much publicity to the Government’s main- project growth strategies, its concern for small businesses had been misunderstood,.

.The latest Department of. Labour survey showed that, 60 per cent of the workforce is employed in “stand alone” businesses consisting of fewer than 50 people. Of the 400,000 new jobs the Government planned to create in the next decade, almost 250,000 would therefore be in

small businesses, Mr Bolger said.

“While it is necessary to think big to overcome New Zealand’s economic and employment problems, it is not a question of promoting either the big or the small, or creating a division between them. They are interdependent.” he said. New Zealand was still a nation of small and mediumsized businesses, run by managers who too often had only a vague idea of the management function, arid whose skills, might be ' attributed largely to the mistakes they had made, Mr Bolger said. “As a community we can no longer afford a casual approach to skill acquisition if we are to achieve our growth potential,” he said.