“While it has been a difficult six months for the country, Manawatu-Whanganui has impressed with its resilience across a range of metrics,” ASB economists said in their quarterly regional economic scorecard.
Employment figures have been better than anywhere else, construction was healthy and house prices have held up.
Manawatu-Whanganui improved six places from the March quarter in the scorecard of 14 regions across employment, retail sales, house prices, wages, new car sales and construction.
Given that the country was under covid-19 restrictions during most of the quarter, all economic performance indicators were subdued and the outlook was not promising, ASB commented.
Regions reliant on the primary sector filled the first nine places, with Hawke’s Bay second, Gisborne third, Taranaki fourth, Tasman fifth and Waikato and Bay of Plenty sixth equal.
Wellington performed the best of the metropolitan regions at 10th, followed by Auckland.
Five of the six South Island regions filled the lowest levels of the scorecard and Canterbury fell furthest from fifth to fourteenth-equal.
The region was near the bottom for housing consents after a near-decade of earthquake replacement and its low level of employment growth was coming off a high base.
