New Zealand - Economic sectors

Despite its reputation as a country of primary production, the contribution of agriculture, fishing, and hunting to New Zealand's gross domestic product was only 8.4 percent in 1999. This proportion has been slowly declining since the early 1980s. The relative decline in industry has been even more dramatic, falling from 32.1 percent in 1975 to 23.2 percent of GDP in 1999. This has been partly a result of economic restructuring under which tariffs have been dramatically reduced on manufactured imports, but it also follows the trend in most industrialized countries away from manufacturing and other sectors in "industry" to services. However, the growth of the latter has not been great in relative terms in New Zealand. Services have increased only slightly from 45.3 percent in 1975 to 47.2 percent of GDP in 1999. Aspects of the economy which do not fit into the 3 service sector categories have increased the most over the last quarter century. These include general

government transactions and the increasing value of owner-occupied dwellings.