November 17, 2017 10:00am by David Farrar

Billions more borrowing

Finance Minister Grant Robertson maintains the Government still plans to cut New Zealand’s debt levels, as economists warn billions more will be borrowed over the coming years.

In Opposition Labour laid out a fiscal plan which would borrow around $11 billion more than National had proposed, but still cut debt as a share of the total economic output from 24 per cent to 20 per cent by 2022.

The plan formed a major point of contention during the election campaign, as National finance spokesman Steven Joyce was widely mocked for his claim that Robertson’s plan had a major “fiscal hole”.

But bank economists, who monitor the likely issuance of government bonds, are warning of pressure for Treasury to borrow billions more than Labour had signalled because of new spending promises.

National worked so hard to get us back into surplus so we could stop borrowing. So how much more do the economists think Labour will borrow?

ANZ has forecast that Labour will borrow $13 billion more than its pre-election fiscal update maintained it would over the next four years, although around $3b of that would go to the NZ Super Fund. This would see net Crown debt at 23 per cent of gross domestic product, 3 percentage points higher than Labour’s plan.

So Labour said they will borrow $11 billion more, ANZ reckon it will be $24 billion more.

Now there are around 2.4 million households in New Zealand so Labour are going to borrow an extra $10,000 per household to fund their promises.