- Hon Cameron Brewer
Kiwi businesses can now find their share of the $400 million a year the Government puts into business grants, funds, and equity schemes in minutes rather than hours, with the launch of the upgraded Funding Explorer, Small Business and Manufacturing Minister Cameron Brewer says.
Hosted on business.govt.nz, the tool brings together 15 funding opportunities from seven government agencies into a single searchable place.
“Business owners are busy people. They are running a business, employing locals and looking for ways to grow. They should not have to spend hours trawling through half a dozen government websites to work out what they are eligible for,” Mr Brewer says.
“There’s a lot of support available for businesses. The problem was that it was scattered, and too many struggled to find it. This fixes that.”
Businesses can search by sector and by what they are trying to do, whether that is commercialising an idea, lifting productivity, investing in research and development, or breaking into a new export market.
The upgrade came out of a cross-government review of how to lift the growth impact of business funding, which found the system was fragmented and hard for businesses to navigate. Seven agencies worked together to fix it.
“Getting seven agencies to line up behind one simple tool is not a small thing, and they deserve credit for it. Businesses do not care which department a fund sits in. They just want to know what they can apply for,” Mr Brewer says.
The tool was demonstrated to business groups before launch, including Advancing Manufacturing Aotearoa, whose chief executive Catherine Lye backed it as removing a real barrier for manufacturers who often do not know what support is available to them.
Funding Explorer sits alongside other business.govt.nz tools such as ONECheck and the Employment Agreement Builder, which are used by hundreds of thousands of business owners a year. Business.govt.nz recorded 6.2 million interactions in the past 12 months, with a 91 per cent user satisfaction score.
“Every hour a business owner spends navigating government websites is an hour not spent growing their business. Making support easy to find means more investment, more jobs and stronger exports,” Mr Brewer says.
“This is fixing the basics and building the future, so Kiwi businesses can spend less time on government paperwork and more time getting ahead.”
