Robertson GrantMINISTERIAL STATEMENTSCOVID-19 Outbreak—Government's Response to Economic EffectsHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I wish to make a ministerial statement on the Government's response to the economic effects of COVID-19. While there is much uncertainty about the COVID-19 outbreak it is clear that it is going to impact the world economy and therefore New Zealand's economy for much of 2020. As we know from events like the global financial crisis New Zealand is not immune to economic shocks that occur offshore and that are beyond our control but what we can do alongside our public health response is to support confidence with a plan to address domestic economic impacts.Our first responsibility as a Government is the health and wellbeing of our citizens. That is why our response continues to be led by our public health response. This strong public health response will also ultimately be critical to ensuring our economy and our people come through this outbreak in good shape. We have committed to providing the necessary resources to support our health system to protect New Zealanders' health and wellbeing.From an economic perspective the Government has already made a number of immediate interventions including support for the tourism and seafood industries funding to increase regional business support programmes and directing Government departments to pay businesses faster to support cash flow. Inland Revenue and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) are supporting businesses and workers on issues like provisional tax readjustments late payment and filing fees wage instalment plans and income support.MSD's rapid response teams are in place in regions like Tai Rāwhiti and we have removed the stand-down period. I met yesterday with the chief executives of New Zealand's major banks who told me that they are well-prepared both in terms of their own operations and in their ability to work with their customers to get through this. The options they highlighted for customers are reducing or suspending principal payments on loans and temporarily moving to interest-only repayments helping with restructuring business loans consolidating loans to help make repayments more manageable providing access to short-term funding and referring individual customers to budgeting services. I strongly encourage businesses and banks to talk now and make a plan to get through this challenging situation. Yesterday the Government signalled its further steps as the impacts spread across the economy. Decisions on these measures need to balance the risks of poorly targeted spending and moving in time to support affected firms and individuals when they need it. Our business continuity package includes a targeted wage subsidy scheme for workers in the most adversely affected sectors training and redeployment options for affected employees and working with banks on the potential for future working capital support for companies that face temporary credit constraints. We will not be able to provide a wage subsidy for all affected firms during the duration of COVID-19. It will have to be temporary. It will also have to be tailor-made. We want to target the subsidies to those who are most affected and least able to adjust. Further details of this package will be announced next week. These initiatives do not stop us from providing other forms of assistance to people and firms but they are a sensible place to begin. We have also directed officials to develop longer-term macroeconomic measures that may be required to support the economy businesses and workers if there is a major sustained global downturn. I reiterate that while we are planning for that situation we are not predicting it but planning for it is the responsible thing to do. I want to be clear that this situation is very different to other challenges the New Zealand economy has faced in the past decade. The Canterbury and Kaikōura earthquakes were events that impacted defined areas where it was clear which businesses were affected why and how. With COVID-19 which is an evolving global health crisis we are seeing different businesses in the same industries and in the same regions impacted differently. That is why a tailor-made response is required. The global financial crisis was caused by the concerns about what financial institutions like banks were experiencing but that's not what is happening here. We have a very sound and stable banking system and a sound underlying economy. We have been running surpluses. Our net debt position at 19.5 percent of GDP is well below what we inherited and well below other countries. We are already ahead of the curve with the $12 billion New Zealand Upgrade Programme which is supporting the economy. This is a global problem that New Zealand is well positioned to deal with and because this Government has the interests of all New Zealanders at heart if we all work together—Government businesses and workers—we will get through this.