#economy: Māori Business Powerhouse: $32.6 Billion in Assets as Māori Enterprises Build Jobs, Exports and Wealth

The scale of Māori business across Aotearoa is continuing to grow, with new Stats NZ figures identifying 5,850 economically significant Māori businesses, tens of thousands of workers, more than $1.4 billion in goods exports and Māori authorities controlling assets worth $32.6 billion.

Stats NZ’s latest Tatauranga umanga Māori – Statistics on Māori businesses: 2025 provides one of the country’s most detailed snapshots of Māori commercial activity, covering Māori authorities, other economically significant Māori enterprises and a subset of Māori tourism businesses.

The figures show Māori businesses operating across virtually every part of the modern economy — from agriculture, forestry and fishing to construction, professional services, health, property, tourism and international trade.

But Stats NZ also carries an important warning: these numbers do not represent every Māori-owned business in Aotearoa. The release captures defined subsets of economically significant Māori businesses, meaning the true footprint of Māori enterprise is broader than the headline numbers suggest.

5,850 Māori businesses identified

For the 2025 release, Stats NZ identified 1,362 Māori authorities and 4,488 other Māori enterprises.

That gives a combined total of 5,850 businesses.

Of those, 438 — or 7.5 percent — were identified as Māori tourism businesses.

Māori authorities are economically significant businesses involved in collectively managing assets held by Māori. They can include businesses associated with iwi, hapū, trusts and other collective ownership structures.

Other Māori enterprises are economically significant Māori businesses that are not classified as Māori authorities.

Stats NZ identifies Māori businesses through a range of sources including self-identification through business surveys and the New Zealand Business Number register, Inland Revenue tax codes, government information, Māori business networks and publicly available information relating to post-settlement governance entities.

More than 55,000 workers

The employment footprint is substantial.

Stats NZ reports that Māori authorities employed around 12,500 people, while other Māori enterprises employed approximately 43,200.

Combined, that represents around 55,700 employees across the two categories captured in the release.

And those jobs are spread throughout the country.

Around 17 percent of Māori business geographic units were located in the Auckland region, demonstrating the importance of Tāmaki Makaurau to the Māori commercial economy while also highlighting the nationwide and regional nature of Māori enterprise.

The employment numbers matter particularly against the backdrop of a difficult labour market for Māori.

They demonstrate that Māori business is not simply about accumulating assets. Māori enterprises are employers and income generators supporting thousands of households.

Māori business is no longer confined to the primary sector

Agriculture, forestry and fishing remain fundamental to the Māori economy, but the latest figures demonstrate just how diversified Māori enterprise has become.

Among the 4,488 other Māori enterprises, the largest industry grouping was professional, scientific and technical services, with 834 businesses.

That was followed by:

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing — 756 businesses
• Construction — 495 businesses
• Health care and social assistance — 315 businesses.

That is an important story in itself.

The modern Māori economy includes scientists, consultants, technology businesses, builders, health providers, tourism operators and professional services alongside the more familiar farming, fishing and forestry interests.

For Māori authorities, the relationship with whenua remains particularly significant. Around 21 percent operated in primary industries, while approximately one-third were non-residential property operators.

$5.7 billion in Māori authority income

The financial figures reveal significant economic scale.

Māori authorities recorded total income of $5.7 billion during the 2025 financial year, an increase of 1.4 percent, or $79 million, from the previous year.

Operating income increased 1.2 percent, while non-operating income increased 4 percent.

That growth came during a difficult period for the wider economy.

Stats NZ reports that total income across all New Zealand businesses covered by the Annual Enterprise Survey decreased by 0.4 percent over the same period.

That means Māori authorities increased their overall income at a time when the equivalent measure across the wider business sector went backwards.

Assets climb to $32.6 billion

Perhaps one of the most significant figures in the entire release is the value of the asset base.

Total assets held by Māori authorities reached $32.6 billion in 2025, increasing by $830 million, or 2.6 percent, from the previous financial year.

That asset base matters because it represents more than a balance-sheet number.

Much of Māori commercial wealth is held collectively and is intended to support not simply today’s owners or beneficiaries, but generations to come.

That creates a fundamentally different investment horizon for many iwi and Māori entities.

Commercial performance can sit alongside objectives including employment, education, housing, environmental restoration, cultural revitalisation and distributions or services for whānau.

Surplus jumps 28 percent

Profitability also strengthened.

Stats NZ reports the total surplus before income tax for Māori authority businesses increased by $171 million, or 28 percent, to $781 million in the 2025 financial year.

Operating surplus before tax increased 15 percent, or $93 million.

That performance is significant because stronger surpluses can create greater capacity to reinvest.

For collectively owned Māori entities, that can mean investment in new commercial ventures, whenua development, infrastructure and diversification as well as building stronger financial resilience against future economic shocks.

Nearly $1.45 billion exported to the world

Māori businesses are also substantial exporters.

Māori authorities exported $872 million worth of goods during the period covered by the release.

Of that, 24 percent went to China, underlining the importance of the Chinese market to parts of the Māori export economy.

Other Māori enterprises exported another $574 million worth of goods.

Together, that amounts to approximately $1.446 billion in goods exports across the two Māori business categories.

Those numbers demonstrate that Māori businesses are not simply serving domestic markets.

They are selling Aotearoa products into international supply chains and bringing export earnings back into the country.

That also means global trade conditions, tariffs, shipping costs, geopolitical tensions and access to major markets can have direct consequences for iwi and Māori asset owners.

684,900 hectares of Māori farming land

Whenua remains another major part of the story.

The release records 684,900 hectares of land on Māori farms.

Separate analysis from the same Stats NZ dataset shows Māori farms tend to be considerably larger than the New Zealand farm average and have greater proportions of land in forestry, bush and scrub.

That combination demonstrates why debates around farming regulation, forestry, freshwater, biodiversity, carbon markets and the Emissions Trading Scheme can carry particular significance for Māori landowners.

These are not abstract environmental policy arguments.

They can directly affect the productive potential, income and intergenerational value of collectively owned whenua.

Māori tourism remains an important shop window

The release identifies 438 Māori tourism businesses within its defined business population.

Of those, 192 were in arts and recreation services and 147 in accommodation and food services. Smaller numbers operated across transport, administrative and support services and other industries.

The Stats NZ definition used in this release is narrower than some wider estimates of the Māori tourism sector, so the figures should not be interpreted as representing every Māori tourism operator in the country.

Separate research commissioned by New Zealand Māori Tourism estimated 3,595 Māori tourism businesses operating across core and general tourism industries in 2023, employing more than 15,000 people and contributing $1.2 billion to the economy.

Both sets of numbers point to the same broader reality: Māori culture, manaakitanga, whenua and storytelling have become an increasingly valuable part of Aotearoa’s international visitor proposition.

A note of caution when comparing years

Stats NZ says the Māori business population used for the 2025 report has been updated as it improves the way businesses are identified.

New information sources and improvements in population maintenance mean some historical figures have also been revised.

That means simple comparisons between the number of businesses in this release and previously published releases can be misleading. Some changes reflect improved identification rather than entirely new businesses suddenly appearing.

Stats NZ also stresses that its business-demography statistics cover economically significant enterprises, and some smaller enterprises fall outside the dataset.

So 5,850 should not be read as the total number of Māori businesses operating in New Zealand.

From settlement assets to economic rangatiratanga

The wider significance of the figures is what they reveal about the changing Māori economy.

For decades, discussions about Māori economic development were frequently framed around disadvantage, Treaty settlements and recovering assets lost through colonisation.

Those issues remain important.

But the contemporary story increasingly includes another dimension — Māori as employers, investors, exporters, entrepreneurs and owners of substantial commercial assets.

The numbers are formidable: $32.6 billion in Māori authority assets, $5.7 billion in annual income, $781 million in pre-tax surplus, almost $1.45 billion in goods exports and around 55,700 employees across the Māori businesses captured by this dataset.

And even those figures do not capture the entire Māori business economy.

As Election 2026 approaches, that should raise a bigger policy question.

The conversation about Māori economic development cannot simply be about addressing deficit.

It also needs to be about unlocking capital, developing whenua, growing exports, supporting Māori entrepreneurs, building skilled jobs and ensuring Māori businesses can move further into technology, innovation and high-value industries.

Because the latest Stats NZ numbers demonstrate something increasingly difficult to overlook.

The Māori economy is not sitting on the margins of the New Zealand economy. It is helping drive it.

#MaoriBusiness #MaoriEconomy #PakihiMaori #TataurangaUmangaMaori #StatsNZ #EconomicRangatiratanga #Rangatiratanga #MaoriEnterprise #MaoriAuthorities #IwiBusiness #WhenuaMaori #MaoriFarming #MaoriTourism #MaoriExports #ExportsNZ #ChinaTrade #Agribusiness #Forestry #ConstructionNZ #MaoriHealth #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #RegionalEconomy #Jobs #MaoriJobs #Whanau #Iwi #Hapu #Election2026 #Election26 #Aotearoa #TeAoMaori #MaoriNews #WaateaNews #RadioWaatea