Ngā Haumitanga o te Tahua 2023 Budget 2023 Investments
Budget 2023 responds to the immediate financial pressures affecting New Zealanders, while ensuring that we are improving the resilience of Aotearoa New Zealand’s critical infrastructure and investing in a more productive economy. The volatile global economic backdrop and domestic challenges, including from Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods, make our balanced and targeted approach essential so we can support New Zealanders today while building for tomorrow.
Recent Budgets have had a significant focus on keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19 and accelerating the recovery and rebuild from the pandemic. While COVID-19 continues to persist and still requires significant resources for vaccination and related programmes, new challenges have arisen that require significant Government investment. Our investment package for Budget 2023 is focused on the following priorities:
- supporting New Zealanders with the cost of living
- delivering the services New Zealanders rely on
- recovery and resilience, and
- fiscal sustainability.
In Budget 2023, net new operating spending of $4.8 billion per annum is lower than the $5.9 billion in Budget 2022. New Zealand’s low public debt allows for $10.7 billion total capital investment from the multi-year capital allowance, coupled with a $6 billion National Resilience Plan, focused on closing the infrastructure deficit which has built up in this country over decades. Managing within a lower operating allowance this Budget has been made possible through tough decisions and a reprioritisation and savings process that has led to a total of $4 billion in savings, which has allowed us to target resources to where they are needed most at this time.