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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District]

Commercial

Commercial.

During the year 1898, Auckland imported more than any other provincial district in the colony. For that year the total value of its imports amounted to £2,228,386, as against £2,071,184 for Wellington, £1,933,116 for Otago, and £1,471,304 for Canterbury. Auckland has for a number of years held the highest average in the value of goods imported by the large provincial districts.

In the value of exports for 1898, Canterbury (including Lyttelton and Timaru) led with £2,447,018, Otago (including the ports of Dunedin, Invercargill, Bluff, and Oamaru) came next with £1,950,018, Wellington was third with £1,88,075, and Auckland fourth with £1,676,152.

Comparing imports with exports, Auckland's excess of the former for the decade 1888 to 1897 was £1,554,809; but for each of the other large provinces the balance was on the other side. Wellington's excess of exports amounted to the modest sum of £338,831. Otago's was £2,890,568, while Canterbury's totalled the extraordinary sum of £10,991,892, an average of over a million a year. The fact that Auckland's exports have not been in excess may perhaps be accounted for by the importations of British capital in the shape of machinery for the development of the gold mines and in wages for miners, and Wellington's small excess of exports may be to some extent caused by the imports of specie by the banks, whose head offices are there, by the direct imports of Government, and by those indirectly caused by the expenditure in Wellington of Government money contributed by all parts of the Colony. Both Auckland and Wellington import largely for Hawke's Bay and Taranaki, but it is not easy to account for Canterbury's excess of ten millions in exports during a single decade.

In interprovincial commerce Auckland plays an important and increasing part, and she does a very large reciprocal trade within her own borders.

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