Statistics NZ said this morning that $19.3 billion was spent on ICT during the 12 months, a similar growth rate seen in the previous year.

The top two commodities for ICT sales were telecommunication and program distribution services, with $5.8 billion, while computer and related equipment clocked in at $3.6 billion.

Domestic sales of ICT goods and services rose 4 per cent to $17.9 billion in 2008, but export sales of ICT goods and services fell 8 per cent to $1.4 billion.

ICT businesses were asked by Stats NZ about what kind of barriers to growth they were facing.

The most commonly reported barrier was "strength of competition", reported by 29 per cent of businesses in 2008. This strong sense of competition was the most commonly reported barrier in 2007 also.

Also posing a barrier to growth was the ability to attract and retain qualified and experienced staff. Getting finance became tougher during the year, but was still not as much a barrier as competition and getting staff.

ICT is an area where the big guys dominate, with the latest survey showing 75 per cent of sales were done by big players.

There were 2,283 businesses that reported sales of ICT goods and services in the 2008 financial year, up 30 from the year before. Of these, 1,923 were classified as small, 210 as medium and 153 as large.

ICT sales for small businesses were $3.4 billion. This was over twice that of medium businesses ($1.5 billion) although there were more than nine times as many small businesses as medium businesses.

Small businesses in general accounted for a smaller proportion than large businesses of ICT sales in most commodities, however, for the sales of training and education in ICT, small businesses played a leading role with 65 per cent of the total sales of $40 million.

HERALD ONLINE