A newly released report suggests economic crime could be setting the country back billions of dollars.

A draft report released under the Official Information Act suggests it could be costing more than $9 billion a year.

That amounts to about four percent of our GDP.

The Serious Fraud Office document completed last year shows almost a third of that is costs to the public sector.

It estimates that New Zealand loses around $2 billion every year in mostly undetected tax fraud, and hundreds of millions in ACC and other public sector fraud.

Around $80 million is lost through welfare fraud.