Government officials are waiting for exporters and people in the aviation and tourism sectors to deal with the immediate effects of grounded of European flights before trying to compile estimates of the cost of Iceland's volcanic eruption on New Zealand t
Government officials are waiting for exporters and people in the aviation and tourism sectors to deal with the immediate effects of grounded of European flights before trying to compile estimates of the cost of Iceland's volcanic eruption on New Zealand trade.
"While we're in the thick of it, it's all speculative," said Ministry of Economic Development communications adviser Lyn Holland.
Reports of swings-and-roundabouts gains as NZ exporters won big orders in Asia and North America replacing products such as cut flowers, salmon and other seafood were still anecdotal and not yet backed up with specific figures, she said.
"Everybody ... is so busy doing what they have to do in terms of a crisis situation, that we don't want to have to bother them just at the moment."
But trade and economics officials had made arrangements to track what was happening, especially in case the volcanic interruption to normal trade continued.
An Australian academic, Deanne Bird, at Macquarie University – who has just spent four years studying eruption hazards in southern Iceland – today warned there was "significant concern" that a much bigger neighbour of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, known as Katla, may also erupt.
The second volcano, which is buried under a thicker sheet of ice, has erupted at least 20 times with catastrophic impacts, and tends to do so twice a century.
The last Katla eruption was in 1918, when people in Iceland said there was so much volcanic ash in the air they could not see their hand if they held it 30cm in front of them.
Ms Holland said a "truckload of stats" was routinely collected from the export sector, and officials would study that data over the next couple of weeks.
