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Wall Street declined as disappointing earnings from Wal-Mart and a surprise drop in US industrial production exacerbated nervousness about equities trading near record highs. With about an hour of trading left in the day in New York, the Dow dropped 1.2 percent, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index shed 1.06 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite Index sank 0.98 percent. Slides …

Official Government ‘ need to know’ facts and figures from the 2014 budget. Balanced and responsible management of the New Zealand economy continues, allowing more investment in families and public assets (All figures for four years to 2017/18 unless otherwise stated). Looking ahead to the results of responsible economic management Economic growth forecast to average 2.8 per cent over the next …

Budget 2014 is first and foremost a conservative budget.  You could only be disappointed if you went into it expecting something spectacular.  This budget didn’t disappoint because we got exactly what we expected: more of the same.  This is not a budget that will change anyone’s opinion of the Government, be they friend or foe.  But it does allow the …

The government has sprinkled the proceeds of its $4.7 billion assets sales programme across projects ranging from housing developments to irrigation schemes and an increased bailout for state-owned Kiwirail. Some $1 billion of the money, held by the Future Investment Fund, has been allocated in the 2014 budget, including $67 million for a new Grey Base Hospital on the West …

Two days after Australia’s black budget, New Zealand Finance Minister Bill English has unveiled a Crown balance sheet where revenue growth runs ahead of expenses in an economy accelerating to the fastest pace in a decade. English confirmed a return to Budget surplus in 2015 at $372 million, wider than the $86 million projected in the half year economic and …

Concerns over the high cost of building materials see the government temporarily cutting tariffs and anti-dumping duties on imported building products to zero, as part of efforts to improve housing affordability. The duty cuts will include products such as plasterboard, reinforcing steel bar and wire nails, and tariffs will fall to zero for products such as roofing, cladding, insulation, paints, …

The government is to proceed with new a regime allowing start-up companies to cash out all or part of their tax losses from research and development expenditure, and to write off “black hole” R&D spending on unsuccessful projects. The announcements are expected to cost the government around $58.1 million over four years and follow a consultation process in which both …

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 …