WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand's visitor arrivals dropped for the first time in five years in January as fewer Chinese tourists visited the country, Statistics New Zealand said on Wednesday.
The number of short-term visitors to New Zealand fell 0.5 percent in January from a year earlier.
The number of tourists from China fell more than 30 percent, though statistics officials said that was largely due to the timing of Chinese New Year, which this year fell in February.
"Provisional figures show arrivals from China are picking up in February 2018, as expected, with the start of the Year of the Dog," said Peter Dolan, the agency's senior manager for populations insights.
The country's annual net migration also eased off recent highs as government regulations introduced in the middle of last year came into force.
On an annual basis net migration was 70,100, down from a record high of 72,400 in July.
However on a monthly basis, the country posed a seasonally adjusted net gain of 6,210 permanent and long-term migrants in January compared to 5,780 the month before, which economists said showed immigration was not at risk of plummeting.
"While off its highs, net migration is still showing a great deal of resilience. Consequently, even though we expect a continued easing off over the next few years, this may be quite gradual," said Satish Ranchhod, senior economist with Westpac Bank.
The country's soaring immigration has in recent years been some of the fastest in the Western world when compared to population size.
That has underpinned the country's strong economic growth, but also caused public concern as the nation's infrastructure struggled to keep up.
Migration was a hot topic in September's turbulent election and the newly elected Labour-led government has said it would introduce restrictions which could curb net migration by up to 30,000, leading some economists to warn of slower growth in the next few years.
New Zealand's dollar <NZD=> was largely unchanged in the wake of the release, having already been knocked to a two-week low of $0.7230 overnight as the U.S. dollar gained on an upbeat first speech by the new Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell.
(Reporting by Charlotte GreenfieldEditing by James Dalgleish)
