Lotu-Iiga Sam: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lotu-Iiga Sam: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8885. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
2. 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What progress is the Government making in its programme to build a more competitive and productive economy? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 The economy is growing and we are making reasonable progress. The Government has set out a wide-ranging programme to put the economy on a more competitive footing. Particularly we have embarked on more than 300 initiatives to build export markets innovation skills capital markets natural resources and improve infrastructure. This is helping to give business the confidence to invest grow and hire new staff. In addition sensible fiscal and monetary policy is helping to keep interest rates and inflation rates low. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What do the latest statistics show about the economy’s performance and what are the key factors driving this? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: One should always be careful with the use particularly of economic statistics covering short periods of time. However last week Statistics New Zealand announced growth of 1.5 percent in the December quarter. This growth was broad based with 15 of the 16 measured industries growing. What is probably more important than the quarterly growth rate though is the annual growth rate which showed that in 2012 the New Zealand economy grew by 3 percent a bit faster than we might have expected and fairly comparable to the Australian growth rate for the same period of 3.1 percent at a time when it had a very significant boom in capital investment in minerals and resources. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What independent reports has he received about the Government’s economic programme and the progress being made to put the economy on a sound footing? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: There are any number of reports that support the Government’s general economic direction but more recently some comments in the IMF’s latest concluding statement on New Zealand were supportive. It concluded that the Government’s fiscal consolidation strikes the right balance between sustaining growth and limiting increase in Government debt to reinforce the Government’s intention to stay on track to surplus in 2014-15. Although there are risks with the global economy and the housing sector the IMF says New Zealand is well positioned to respond to any other unexpected events through its monetary and fiscal policy settings. 
Hon David Parker 
: How can he claim pride in the performance of the economy when in the December 2012 quarter 23000 jobs were lost and in each of the last three quarters total hours worked have decreased so that there is now less work than when he took office in 2008? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well as we have discussed in the House before quarterly employment numbers are somewhat volatile and difficult to predict. It is difficult to work out exactly what is happening when in that quarter the economy grew by 1.5 percent which if you took it at face value would be one of the fastest-growing quarterly rates in the developed world. Let us just see how it unfolds. What we do know is we are on track for 2 to 3 percent economic growth over the next 12 months and further reductions in unemployment. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What reports has he received on particular sectors of the economy? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I have paid particular attention to reports on the manufacturing sector. Excluding oil production manufacturing grew by 1.5 percent for the December quarter and overall through 2012 the manufacturing sector grew by 2.7 percent. It grew by 2.7 percent. So I was not surprised to see a report with the headline “Index shows ‘no crisis’ in manufacturing sector”. Not for the first time the facts are somewhat at odds with what the Opposition is claiming.