Stats NZ said the majority of immigration was by citizens of India, with a 51,000 arrival increase in the year to January.

Citizens of the Philippines make up the second-biggest proportion of arrivals with 36,500, Stats NZ added.

The next three highest nationalities for immigration in the year to January were citizens of New Zealand, Fiji and South Africa, it said.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has hinted the Government wants to make changes to immigration settings.

“When you break… down and look at what skill level the people on work visas are at, a lot of them are very, very low-skilled,” she told last month’s Economic Forum.

The high levels of net migration – a more than 114 percent increase on the 62,469 figure recorded at the same time in 2017 – illustrates the challenge Prime Minister Christopher Luxon faces to strike the right balance with immigration settings.

“I think the difficulty and the challenge I’m… seeing for migration is politicians often make pretty big decisions over the likes of migration policy that often aren’t going to affect migration right here and now,” Infometrics principal economist Brad Olsen told AM last month. “It might not even affect it for the next 12 months.