Agency’s January statistics incomplete

Statistics published by Waka Kotahi on vehicle registrations for January 2022, and featured in the February issue of Autofile and stories online, are incomplete. 

The transport agency says data for January 29, 30 and 31 is not included in them. It adds work is under way to resolve this issue as soon as possible. 

As of February 4, the full dataset for last month was unavailable to the industry, so Autofile decided to publish the statistics for January 1-28 inclusive. 

This is because Waka Kotahi is unable to advise a date for the resolution of this matter – it informs us this may not be until the latter half of February. The agency adds it will provide an update once more information becomes available. 

The incomplete dataset affects all pages in the statistics section of the February issue of Autofile magazine, except for those provided by NZ Customs Service. 

We hope to be able to include January’s missing numbers in year-to-date figures up to the end of February in the March issue of the magazine. 

Changes to regions

From the start of 2022, registration statistics in Autofile have changed from 22 postal code areas to areas based on Statistics NZ’s regional council boundaries. 

This has come about through changes to the way Waka Kotahi inputs stats into its database and the data we used to rely on is no longer available. 

In addition to regional council areas, the agency also includes “Chatham Islands”, “overseas” and “unknown”. Because these cannot be incorporated into New Zealand’s 16 regions, we have added “other” to capture these totals separately. We hope these statistics continue to be of use to readers.