“Technology exporter Rakon yesterday called for something to be done about the volatility of the New Zealand dollar.”
“Overseas traders profit from playing with our currency and they do so partly because as a nation we borrow so much offshore for non-export product assets, such as investment in housing,” chairman Bryan Mogridge said at the annual meeting.
In commenting today that “there is some evidence at the moment that the recovery could consist of a pickup in housing,” Finance Minister Bill English went on to tell reporters that “now that’s more of the problem than we had before and it would be a concern particularly if it goes with a high exchange rate that punishes our exporters.”
Productive Economy Council spokesman Selwyn Pellett says that while the government is 100% on target in identifying the problem that real wealth creation for the country can only come from exports, the PEC remains unconvinced about its commitment to solving it. read more »
As the revelations continue, we realise that it’s not the voters of New Zealand that have been holding back on implementing Capital Gains Tax (CGT) but rather a very small yet influential group of New Zealanders well connected to the political machinery of office,” says Selwyn Pellett, spokesman for the Productive Economy Council.
“We had no idea of the number of politicians on both sides of the house that are compromised by their own investment choices,” says Pellett. read more »
“How on earth can we expect the government to rationally debate the need for a capital gains or land tax when they’re just as ruthlessly exploiting the tax laws to reduce their taxes. And they’re in charge of collecting taxes!”
“As the furore surrounding Ministers’ use of taxpayer money for housing allowances escalates, it has come to light that some Ministers are receiving rent from properties they own from fellow MP’s, and that the income is from taxpayer funded living allowances.”
“David Preston offered a good appraisal of our monetary policy in his presentation entitled Putting Credit Back into Monetary Policy. His argument was that if you measure the success of monetary policy only by the objectives set out in the Policy Targets Agreement then it has been fairly successful, but if you measure success according to wider economic objectives then it has failed.”
“The furore over Minister’s second homes once again raises the question of the lack of Capital Gains Tax incentivising property speculation, distorting our investment regime and depriving our productive sector of the financial oxygen it needs to grow”, says John Blackham, of the Productive Economy Council.
“If the income from property speculation, be it by Ministers of the Crown or private citizens, were taxed in line with what Joe average Kiwi citizen contributes through his weekly wage packet, then New Zealand would stand a better chance of competing with the rest of the developed world.” read more »
“Second tier’ ratings agency Fitch is currently reviewing New Zealand’s AA+ foreign currency credit rating. Here’s 10 reasons below why it should downgrade New Zealand’s rating. Standard and Poor’s wimped out. Let’s hope Fitch doesn’t.”
“The issues in my opinion are simple. Our main banks are almost branch offices of their Australian parents. Those banks borrow money, loan it cheaply to Australians and then further clip the ticket and lend it here at interest rates above those across the Tasman.”