According to a new report made by a New Zealand’s innovation agency called Callaghan Innovation, the third biggest sector of New Zealand, which is information technology, could be boosted a lot because of the blockchain. There seems to be plenty of room for development in the sector if the country is able to embrace the technology.

At the moment, New Zealand has a huge tech sector and it brings in more than $16 billion USD annually for the country.

Erica Lloyd, from Callaghan Innovation, has affirmed that the distributed ledger technology is certainly one of the best ways for companies to be able to profit from innovation. Another way was via the injection of high paying tech jobs in the country.

The main problem that could actually get in the way of the growth of the country is that there are startups which have their workforce distributed among many countries and they should be all on New Zealand for the country to profit from them. Because of this, the country should ensure that they choose to live in the country.

Why? Mostly because the report says that it is important that these high-earning professionals pay their taxes, so they can give something back to it. Regardless of from where the company is, the report sees potential in having employees living in New Zealand and paying taxes.

The reports also see a big chance of the blockchain and distributed ledger technology act as a catalyst that would help some other sectors of the economy like finances, education, supply chains and even healthcare and transport.

The report finished affirming that the blockchain has the potential to even transform the public services in the country because it could prevent fraud and improve the transparency of the administration a lot, which could be used to establish more trust.

New Zealand could reap several benefits if it was actually able to make the sector grow. However, there are issues that are preventing the blockchain from flourishing in the country. The main one is that the sector could be more regulated and supported.

For instance, blockchain companies need to have their access to banks unblocked in order to achieve the best results. For requiring even the most basic services these companies face numerous issues like a very strict anti-money laundering regime that ends up blocking most of the companies from the services.

The idea is that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the financial authorities should create guidelines that could support the industry without creating risk for money laundering.

If the companies are properly integrated into the system, the chances that they are able to achieve great results and boost the economy are very big.

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