page_title: Economy of New Zealand
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of New Zealand / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A Fonterra cooperative dairy factory north of Hamilton, New Zealand.
context_page_description: The economy of New Zealand is a highly developed free-market economy. It is the 51st-largest national economy in the world when measured by nominal gross domestic product and the 67th-largest in the world when measured by purchasing power parity. New Zealand has a large GDP for its size and population. The country has one of the most globalised economies and depends greatly on international trade – mainly with Australia, the European Union, the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Canada. New Zealand's 1983 Closer Economic Relations agreement with Australia means that the economy aligns closely with that of Australia.
  New Zealand's diverse economy has a sizable service sector, accounting for 63% of all GDP activity as of 2013. Large-scale manufacturing industries include aluminium production, food processing, metal fabrication, wood and paper products. Mining, manufacturing, electricity, gas, water, and waste services accounted for 16.5% of GDP as of 2013. The primary sector continues to dominate New Zealand's exports, despite accounting for only 6.5% of GDP as of 2013. The information technology sector is growing rapidly.
context_section_description: For many years New Zealand's economy was built on a narrow range of agricultural products, such as wool, meat and dairy. These products became New Zealand's staple and most valuable exports, underpinning the success of the economy, from the 1850s until the 1970s. For example, from 1920 to the late 1930s, the dairy export quota was usually around 35% of New Zealand's total exports, and in some years made up almost 45%. Due to the high demand for these primary products, manifested by the New Zealand wool boom of 1951, New Zealand had one of the highest standards of living in the world for 70 years.
  In the 1960s, prices for these traditional exports declined, and in 1973 New Zealand lost its preferential trading position with the United Kingdom when the latter joined the European Economic Community. Partly as a result, from 1970 to 1990, the relative New Zealand GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power declined from about 115% of the OECD average to 80%.
  Between 1984 and 1993, New Zealand changed from a somewhat closed and centrally controlled economy to one of the most open economies in the OECD. In a process often referred to in New Zealand as Rogernomics, successive governments introduced policies which dramatically liberalised the economy.
  In 2005 the World Bank praised New Zealand as the most business-friendly country in the world. The economy diversified and by 2008, tourism had become the single biggest generator of foreign exchange.
caption: Agriculture (especially dairy farming – such as for the Fonterra plant shown) is a major export earner
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