The Government is pumping an extra $5.9 million in to Customs to try and fight illicit drug smugglers.

The pre-Budget 2010 announcement came as Prime Minister John Key released the first of a new six-monthly series of reports on the progress of a methamphetamine action plan.

The report reveals little change in the push to control supply and cut off demand.

The availability of methamphetamine "may have become slightly easier" in the middle of 2009 compared to the year before, it says. Police said prices had fluctuated over the past six months and there were distinctions between districts.

An availability score of one indicated it was "very easy" to get P and a score of four would be "very difficult". The score in 2008 was 1.7 and it was still 1.7 last year.

The mean price paid for a point of methamphetamine was slightly higher - up from $96 to $100. The mean price per gram was up from $698 to $738. There was no significant change in the purity of methamphetamine.

Mr Key, however, said he "wouldn't have thought" that it was any easier to get methamphetamine.

"In reality, by next year over-the-counter sales of pseudoephedrine will almost certainly be banned and new technology will mean the illegal importation of that material - particularly from China - will hopefully be reduced," Mr Key said.

While there was room for improvement, the Government's plan for action on P was "dealing to the gangs, the P cooks and dealers who spread their misery throughout New Zealand".

Since legislation passed in December, police had identified $36m worth of assets they believed had been obtained through criminal activity - $11m of which had been successfully frozen.

The waiting times for residential treatment of P-addicts had "fallen dramatically" and more people were phoning in addiction help-lines.

The report showed clan lab busts in the first two months of this year were not as high as the number in the last quarter of last year.

In 2008, there were 409 convictions for dealing methamphetamine and 505 for manufacturing it. Last year, dealing convictions were up to 1396 and manufacturing convictions up to 518.

Customs Minister Maurice Williamson said $5.9m of capital funding had been made available to Customs in the coming Budget.

It would provide new, more advanced tools to detect the activities of drug criminals.