Sports Minister Murray McCully has labelled last year’s Rugby World Cup a success after independent research found it added $573 million to an otherwise tepid economy. The sporting event added 0.34 percent to New Zealand’s gross domestic product over the medium-term, or $573 million in 2007 dollar terms, and added some 7,840 part and full-time jobs, based on Market Economics …

The New Zealand Debt Management Office has expanded its programme for issuing bonds by $6.5 billion over the next four years and flagged it will sell a further $7 billion in debt the following year. The DMO will issue $14 billion in bonds in the 2012/13 year, an increase of $500 million from the budget, and sell an unchanged $10 …

The New Zealand’s government’s margin-of-error target to meet an operating surplus by 2015 has put spending on its biggest programmes under the gun, according to Finance Minister Bill English. The government plans to keep its spending programme in check as the deteriorating global economy puts its budget surplus at risk, singling out “long-term drivers of costs in areas such as …