Six years ago, just before the global financial crisis but as a local recession was taking hold, then Finance Minister Michael Cullen delivered substantial tax cuts in the last Budget of the Labour-led government’s nine year reign. With a general election looming, it looked like the kind of Budget the Finance Minister in a National-led government might have liked to …

The New Zealand Debt Management Office will lift issuance by $3 billion over the coming four years on a slower forecast return to cash surplus. The DMO will raise $8 billion in 2014/15, and $7 billion each of next three years, with an extra $1 billion to be issued in 2015, 2017 and 2018, it said in a statement. The …

The government sees faster growth in the coming years as 40-year high terms of trade and an improving labour market drive increased consumer spending, and as the Canterbury rebuild looks like lasting longer than previously thought. Gross domestic product is thought to have accelerated to 3 percent in the year ended March 31, 2014, before peaking at a decade-high 4 …