The Productive Economy council welcomes Labour’s announced intention to create a monetary policy environment that better supports exporters.

With every political party angling for the populist vote, it’s highly encouraging to see Phil Goff today staking out a position that will provoke serious debate on how we grow the economy. Those businesses that design, make, employ and export real things will love this announcement, says Pellett, the spokesperson for the Productive Economy Council. read more »

Dr Bollard’s increase of the Official Cash Rate to 2.75 per cent is a blow to hard working New Zealanders – both home owners and exporters – who thought the worst was over. This latest move will put more money into the hands of foreign-owned banks and at this point in the economic recovery cycle is plain stupid, says Productive Economy Council spokesman Selwyn Pellett.

“New Zealanders need to demand a fairer system for controlling inflation than the OCR. The Chief Economist of the BNZ said today that all the interest payments received were passed on to savers. This is a misrepresentation of the facts, as the banks’ future profits will demonstrate. The banks lift prices (fees and interest rates) quickly, bring them down slowly and pocket the difference as incremental profit. We’re expected to shrug our shoulders accept it as if there is no alternative,” says Pellett. read more »

Gareth Morgan takes a look at how the Budget will effect the investment landscape and concludes that if the government was serious about ending our reliance on property investment then it must be given a fail mark on that score:

“And we are left more than ever with the tax regime and its application to investment, giving investors little choice but to either surrender sovereignty over their savings to some faceless institution, or to opt out of the wider investment market and just buy property.”

Read Gareth’s piece over at the NZ Herald