The Auckland Business Chamber is celebrating what looks like a win against surcharge regulation. But here's what they're not celebrating: New Zealand started 914,266 businesses in 2025, the fewest since 2020, when the country was still reeling from lockdowns and closed borders. (Source: Stats NZ, business-births-deaths)

Five years ago, in the thick of COVID uncertainty, 914,000 new businesses felt like resilience. Today, with borders open and the economy supposedly recovering, the same number tells a different story. We've gone backwards.

Rewind to 2022. That year, New Zealanders launched 1,032,893 new businesses, the highest count in this dataset. It was the post-pandemic entrepreneurial surge: side hustles, online stores, trades people going solo, consultants leaving corporate jobs. The Great Resignation met the Great Start-Up Wave.

Then something shifted. By 2023, new business starts had dropped to 936,657. Still respectable, but the momentum was gone. In 2024, there was a brief uptick to 988,445, enough to make people think the trend had reversed. It hadn't. By 2025, we're back down to 914,266, lower than the COVID year.

So what happened between 2022 and now? Interest rates, for one. The Official Cash Rate sat at 0.25% in early 2021. By mid-2023, it had hit 5.5%. Starting a business when borrowing costs that much isn't just harder, it's often impossible. The margin for error disappeared.

Then there's the cost of living. When your grocery bill climbs every month and your rent keeps rising, the idea of leaving a steady paycheck to launch something risky becomes less appealing. Entrepreneurship requires a buffer. Fewer Kiwis have one.

And consumer spending? It's been flat or falling for two years. Why start a cafe, a retail store, or a service business when your potential customers are tightening their belts? The data shows people aren't just cautious about spending. They're cautious about starting.

The Business Chamber might be relieved that surcharge bans have stalled, but the bigger story is this: fewer people are starting businesses in the first place. You can't surcharge customers you don't have. You can't build a business in an economy where the margins have been squeezed out before you even open the doors.

2022 was the peak. We've been sliding ever since. The question isn't whether the government will regulate surcharges. It's whether New Zealand can get back to being a country where starting something new feels possible again.