Other Māori enterprises (OMEs)

In Tatauranga umanga Māori 2021, we moved away from reporting on Māori small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and began reporting on other Māori enterprises (OMEs).

An OME is defined as a business or enterprise with the following characteristics:

• the business owner(s) identify it as a Māori business

• it is not owned by another enterprise

• it is not a Māori authority

• it has at least one employee (including any proprietor paid as an employee)

An OME differs from a SME in that OMEs may have more than 100 employees.

To find our OME population, we pooled all of the self-identified Māori businesses identified from our partner lists together with those identified in the Stats NZ surveys and New Zealand business number (NZBN) register, then removed any that did not fit the characteristics above.

In the Business Operations Survey (BOS) 2022, the Māori identification question was updated to be more in line with the Māori business definition released in 2022. The question is broken into three parts, which asks businesses to self-identify as Māori, indicate whether the owner(s) whakapapa to Māori, and what proportion of the business is owned by Māori.

In 2022, the Business Register Update Survey (BRUS) incorporated a two-part Māori identification question, asking Māori businesses to self-identify and to indicate what factors significantly influenced that identification.

The 2022 Agricultural Production Census included a new Māori identification question that allowed Māori farms to self-identify. This has improved the quality and size of the Māori farm population but means that data in the Agricultural production statistics: Year to June 2022 (final) release are not directly comparable to previous years.