But inevitably the short-term result of these moves was to leave the overall level of GDP looking pretty flat. It was, on a small scale, similar to the kind of trauma which the former Soviet bloc countries have gone through in recent years, with whole industries wiped out and, in their case, overall GDP shrinking substantially.
New Zealand’s GDP did not shrink to any significant extent, but for six or seven years it barely grew at all. From the early nineties, however, the picture is much more encouraging.