Tourist arrivals and export volumes also declined, while annual net migration continued to ease.<\/p>\n
Bay of Plenty soared nine spots from its Q1 ranking, with the region\u2019s strong performance driven by a standout kiwifruit season, resilient employment growth, and rising consumer confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fair to say kiwifruit has brought home the trophy,\u201d Tuffley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA strong season has boosted incomes in the Bay, supporting improvements across employment, retail and housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Bay\u2019s labour market has shown impressive resilience, even as nationwide conditions remain subdued. With employment growth holding steady and optimism rising, the Bay is set for continued momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n
The South Island continued its economic dominance over the past year with Southland, Otago and Canterbury taking the remaining top four spots.<\/p>\n
Southland jumped from eighth to second place in Q2, buoyed by strong commodity prices and a resilient housing market, with house prices rising 3.4% and sales up 32%.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Auckland rose five spots from 10th equal to fifth in the latest scorecard.<\/p>\n
Tuffley said Auckland showed \u201cpromising signs of life\u201d in the June quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cStrong population growth and more confident consumers helped lift activity across housing, retail and construction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there\u2019s pockets of pain, particularly around employment and house sales, the region is beginning to show the resilience we expect from the country\u2019s largest economic centre.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wellington slumped to last in the scorecard as persistent weakness in consumer confidence, house prices, house sales and population growth exacerbated an already soft start to the year.<\/p>\n
ASB economists said they expected the recovery in Wellington to be the slowest of the 16 hubs.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead to 2026, Tuffley said improvements were on the horizon, albeit slower than initially projected, as the Reserve Bank signals more cuts to the Official Cash Rate (OCR).<\/p>\n
Tuffley said the 15% US tariffs imposed on New Zealand goods are expected to weigh slightly on the country\u2019s economic recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the full impact remains to be watched.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tourist arrivals and export volumes also declined, while annual net migration continued to ease. Bay of Plenty soared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2851,23486,51,1863,1561,18658,138,23552,10668,219,1888,78,23553,424,111,139,69,1118,1562,1881,5914,13382,23487,6926,23554,418,5652,15412,8822,1120,2044,61,3010,6123],"class_list":["post-22754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-also","tag-asbs","tag-auckland","tag-back","tag-bay","tag-bumper","tag-business","tag-claimed","tag-economic","tag-economy","tag-first","tag-in","tag-kiwifruit","tag-life","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-plenty","tag-recovery","tag-regional","tag-returning","tag-scoreboard","tag-season","tag-showed","tag-shows","tag-signs","tag-spot","tag-survey","tag-takes","tag-time","tag-to","tag-top","tag-while"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}