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Efficiency of spending key to balancing Govt's books a surplus is pushed out

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Wed, 17 Dec 2025, 11:42am
Photo / File
Photo / File

Efficiency of spending key to balancing Govt's books a surplus is pushed out

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Wed, 17 Dec 2025, 11:42am

Treasury's Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update shows more delay to getting the books back to black.  

The deficit's expected to deepen to a depth of $16.9 billion and not narrow to $60 million dollars until 2029-30. 

Economic growth is expected to be just 1.7% next year. 

NZ Herald Business Editor Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham that the problem isn’t in how much we borrow, but the efficiency of government spending.  

He says there's a big lack of trust in the government, as people would be able to cope with higher borrowing if it was going towards amazing infrastructure projects, but we haven’t seen that over the last decade.  

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