Finance Minister Bill English has given the tick of approval to the Reserve Bank’s new set of tools to cool asset bubbles, the most pressing of which is the country’s heated property market. The minister has signed a memorandum of understanding with central bank governor Graeme Wheeler granting the bank regulator the ability to require lenders to hold more capital …

Some $18 billion of new residential housing in Canterbury, accounting for almost half the region’s rebuild, will be the key driver behind New Zealand’s 2.5 percent annual rate of growth over the next four years. The Treasury sees gross domestic product growth of 2.5 percent in the year ended March 31, slipping to 2.4 percent in 2014 before rising to …

Compared to the last four budgets, this year’s reflects an economy moving out of recession and into calmer waters. The global financial crisis is still a risk, but we’re not in the maelstrom anymore. For now, at least. Yet if the fastest annual growth rate we can expect over the next two years is 3 percent – – with the …