How many shovels has Robbo destroyed already .. digging numerous deep holes for the generations ahead ? :)
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Same Treasury which forecast in 2022 a surplus in 2024?
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publica...al-update-2022
Kiss my arse.
Treasury didn't forecast that and you know it.
Let's leave the disingenuousness, that you came here with, to one side and I'll state some facts:
- In the period PREFU covers the incumbent government must show a return to surplus in the final year the PREFU covers.
- The figures are given to the Treasury by Robertson. I repeat: Robertson gives Treasury his spending projections and Treasury has no option but to print them in the PREFU. The figures are not seen as credible by any serious commentator. We go from two year where the combined decific is $21 billion dollars 'magically' into a small surplus. Robertson must project a surplus in that year.
The following is from the Heralds story on the PREFU -
'The road to surpluses is paved with deeper deficits in the short term. The deficit this year is now expected to be $10b, up from $6.9b forecast at the 2023 budget. Next year’s deficit is expected to be $11.4b, up from $7.6b forecast at the Budget.
Those large deficits contribute to much larger borrowing over the four-year forecast period. As recently as May, net core Crown debt was forecast to be $181b in 2027. These forecasts have revised that upwards to $193.3b, or 39.6 per cent of GDP.
Most of the economic growth occurs in the back end of the forecasts.
The forecasts were underpinned by a number of assumptions that seem optimistic.
The borrowing numbers do not include most of the cost of building things like the Auckland Light Rail project, currently costed at more than $14b, or the building of the new Waitematā crossing, which could run to more than $40b.
Robertson said many of these costs fell outside of the forecast period, and Treasury said how they had been funded had not yet been determined.
Treasury warned that there were “a number of significant infrastructure investments that have been announced, or are in pre-implementation stages, but which have limited, or no funding committed yet, and often no clear funding source identified”.
In this, it included the likes of Auckland Light Rail, The Waitematā Harbour Crossing and Let’s Get Wellington Moving.
The forecasts also assume that the Government will run incredibly small budgets for the foreseeable future, baking in 15 years of relative austerity.
Its central forecast assumes that next year’s budget includes an operating allowance (Treasury jargon for “new day-to-day spending”) of $3.5b. The next two years have their allowances cut thanks to decisions Robertson made last month to $3.25b in 2025 and $3b in 2026.
Every budget thereafter has an operating allowance rising by 2 per cent.
What that means is that the forecasts assume that the Government does not run a budget with new spending as large as this year’s budget until at least 2037.
To put this in perspective, the Government’s last three budgets have averaged operating allowances of $4.8b.
This means the Prefu forecasts a decade of relative austerity with each budget funding cost pressures, but leaving nothing left for new policies, including goodies dangled in the many elections between now and then.'
To put this in perspective, the Government’s last three budgets have averaged operating allowances of $4.8b.
Postcript, also from the Herald article:
'Treasury helpfully published an alternative scenario of higher operating allowances, which modelled allowances of $4.5b in budget 2024 (still a smaller allowance than 2023), falling again to $4.25 in 2025 and $4b in 2026 and then rising in 2 per cent a year from 2027.
If the Government followed this track it would mean never returning to surplus, with deficits growing nearly each year to 2.3 per cent of GDP by 2037. Net debt would be more than double where it is currently forecast to be. '