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Activity in the services sector is at its highest level in nearly a year and a half, following the return of tourists and easing of travel restrictions.
The BNZ - BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index (PSI) rose 4.2 points to 58.6 in August, from 51.2 points in July, which was also above its long term average of 53.6 points.
Any reading above 50 suggests expansion, while anything below indicates contraction.
There were significant gains in new activity/sales (67.1) and orders/business (66.5) both displayed significant gains, while stocks/inventories (59.6) were at the highest level since November 2019.
Although employment (50.8) remained somewhat lacklustre and supplier deliveries (49.6) remained in contraction, the other sub-index values were more than enough to push the overall result higher.
In addition, the proportion of positive comments for August at 56 percent, topped the negative, with 58 percent negative comments in July and 59 percent in June.
BNZ senior economist Doug Steel said the New Zealand PSI was strong compared with others in the world, with Australia at 53.3 points, while Europe and the United States were in contraction.
"I should note it's not it's not all one way traffic there is," Steel said.
"If you look at the retail trade component, and that's relatively weak down at 33 (points). In fact, quite weak for for one month.
"So it seems like there is still a lot of noise in the data as there is in a lot of the economic indicators that we monitor so you want to be a bit careful reading too much into one month, but at face value, it is quite strong."
Steel said the combined PSI and Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) released last week indicates the economy is growing faster than initially indicated.
"(The) PCI suggests annual GDP growth up toward 5 percent in the third quarter of 2022," he said.
"If the PCI is truly bouncing, the key question is for how long," he said.