Population growth rate assumptions

The Ministry has stated that it intends to apply the most applicable regional or district population growth rate, taken from the October 2003 Covec paper, to all licences within an Averaging Group.

Ideally, the geographic area over which such growth rates are calculated should be reasonably similar to those covered by licences in each Averaging Group.

If licensees within an Averaging Group have in reality had different population growth rates from each other, this assumption may over- or understate the renewal prices, compared to renewal prices calculated on actual population growth within each licence's coverage area. At this stage, we cannot quantify the extent to which this might be the case, without running calculations on the Averaging Groups.