Shane Jones is denying his Provincial Growth Fund's a failure - despite new statistics showing just a sixth of the money promised has been spent.

$3 billion was planned to be spent in the regions this election cycle, but just $544 million has been spent, creating about 2600 jobs.

Jones told Andrew Dickens the figures don't tell the full story - but it has been tough going.

"I won't shy away from the fact that I've found it incredibly sluggish process to work through firing up the state to chew through that amount of dough."

Jones says part of the challenge has been dealing with local governments who don't have resource consents.

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