The Economic Development Group (EDG) as part of South Waikato District Council is responsible for ensuring the District retains and builds a healthy business community.

This involves assisting with the development of business growth through helping facilitate dealings with Council; ensuring there is right business training, support and resources available in the district; and also at regional and national level, lobbying or connecting with the right government bodies.

Much of EDG work is based around the results of research or the collection, interpretation and dissemination of information and developing projects which fit with the needs of the business community such as the Trade Training Centre and Dairy Push Programme.

These two projects arose from Skills Gap Research carried out in 2004. Both projects are a collaboration of the industry sector providers and South Waikato District Council aimed at building industry capacity. For the district engineering sector this meant capturing the youth before they left the district, providing training courses developed to suit the specific needs of the sector and nurturing students into local apprenticeships. For the dairy industry, it meant 60 local farmers participating in an intensive best practice farm management programme which is ultimately aimed at increasing productivity. This means a significant contribution to the local economy.