According to PMAC the income derived from the phytosanitary fees currently collected are used to address the following:

• running the system that produces phytosanitary certificates, and
• paying for MPI to undertake work that supports market access  and other activities for the export of plant products

Plant Market Access Council (PMAC) believes that the extra income and resource from the fee increases will allow for an expansion of manpower to strengthen the following service areas:

• assisting plant product exporters with maintaining and developing market access
• mitigating the effect of changes put in place by our key markets
• addressing access issues to specific markets as they arise
• ensuring New Zealand's certification process is efficient and minimizes the risk of non-compliant
  product being certified
• building capability and experience within MPI so that succession plans can be developed
  for existing staff members to ensure that exporters are not impacted when they
  are unavailable or retire

PMAC has agreed to fund three additional FTE’s to enable the above activities to be achieved more effectively.  While staff in this area are usually only funded by cost recovered funds paid by industry (under user pays), MPI has been able to fund one of the additional 3 FTE’s for the 2013/14. This combined with
the judicious use of the memorandum account surplus means the fees are likely to increase again in next year but the cost impact on the ePhyto fees can be phased in over 3 years according to PMAC.

"The number of issues that our exporters encounter only seems to increase with time and PMAC has been concerned that over the last few years staff within MPI have been involved in reactive rather than proactive activity. These three additional FTE’s should allow more work to be undertaken to optimise market access, build our capability and better service exporters and producers."

For further information email [email protected] or call 04 23 999 45