Tourism closes on dairy as New Zealand's biggest export earner

Tourism helped buoy up New Zealand's export earnings as dairy prices plunged in the year to the end of June, the government statistics agency announced Wednesday.

In the year to June, total exports of goods and services were 67.5 billion NZ dollars (42.93 billion U.S. dollars), while total imports were 65.1 billion NZ dollars (41.41 billion U.S. dollars), according to Statistics New Zealand.

Dairy remained New Zealand's largest export commodity, earning 12 billion NZ dollars (7.63 billion U.S. dollars), down from 15.8 billion NZ dollars (10.05 billion U.S. dollars) in the previous year.

Meanwhile, spending by international visitors to New Zealand classed as travel exports were up 2.4 billion NZ dollars (1.53 billion U.S. dollars) to 11.7 billion NZ dollars (7.44 billion U.S. dollars).

"Dairy and travel are New Zealand's biggest export earners," international statistics senior manager Jason Attewell said in a statement.

"A fall in dairy exports to China, combined with the increase in expenditure by overseas visitors to New Zealand, has narrowed the gap between the two."

Over one-third of total spending by visitors in New Zealand was by visitors from Australia and the European Union.

The European Union was New Zealand's largest source of imports. Endi