Yang Jian: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYang Jian: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8971. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]1.Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Finance: How will Budget 2016 support further growth in jobs and wages while maintaining the Government’s fiscal management?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): The Budget will be on 26 May. It will continue the Government’s record of fiscal discipline which focuses on getting better results from spending and managing long-term spending pressures. As a result of that so far expenditure has fallen from 34 percent of GDP in 2011 where it peaked to 30 percent in 2015. We are committed to achieving debt of around 20 percent of GDP by 2020. As we said in the Budget Policy Statement with the Budget now broadly in balance the Government will not distinguish between forecasts of small negative balances and small positive balances.David Seymour: What is the fastest-growing item of expenditure over the next 5 years according to the Budget Policy Statement?Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is likely to be national superannuation which is rising at around $700 million to $800 million per year. Alongside that the Government spends about only another billion dollars per year on everything else.Dr Jian Yang: What recent steps has the Government taken to support growth delivering more jobs and higher wages for New Zealand households?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The most recent and one of the largest steps the Government has taken is to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP agreement). This gives equal and fair access for New Zealand exporters to 800 million customers in 11 countries that account for 36 percent of the global economy including the world’s biggest economy the United States. It also means that other countries are bound under that agreement by rules that help protect access of New Zealand exporters to overseas markets. So the TPP agreement is important to jobs and incomes in New Zealand; the alternative of not participating would certainly be bad for New Zealand households.Dr Jian Yang: What is the outlook for economic growth over the next 4 years and how will this growth deliver more jobs for New Zealand households and families?Hon BILL ENGLISH: After a relatively soft first half of 2015 recent data suggest the New Zealand economy picked up somewhat in the second half of last year and the outlook is for continuing moderate growth. The most recent forecasts expect GDP to grow around 2.7 percent per year each year through to 2020 and what this means in terms of jobs and incomes is that there will be a further 173000 additional jobs on top of the 175000 jobs added in the last 3 years.Dr Jian Yang: What are some risks to the economic outlook?Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is fair to say that 2016 has started with certainly a perception of greater risk in the global economy. Factors making up that would be weak commodity prices and slower growth in China driven by lower investment even though the consumption aspect of China’s economy is growing pretty strongly. There is uncertainty around the impact of US interest rates and there appears to be some growing risks around European banks. We will continue to focus on New Zealand’s resilience to any of these changes.Grant Robertson: Is ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley correct when he says: “On a per-capita basis there has essentially been no growth over the past year.”?Hon BILL ENGLISH: In fact he may not be correct. It depends how you measure growth over the last year. It is not surprising that in a growing economy where more and more people are turning up to enjoy the benefits of one of the faster-growing developed economies we may get periods where per capita growth is a bit slower but overall Treasury analysis shows per capita growth has averaged about 1.2 percent per year if you exclude the Canterbury earthquake.Rt Hon John Key: What is New Zealand’s unemployment rate and has he seen any predictions of the unemployment rate going to 7 percent?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The most recent unemployment number was I think 5.3 percent somewhat below the Labour Party finance spokesman’s forecast which as usual was based on his wishful thinking that everything will go bad suddenly. He forecast 7 percent.Grant Robertson: Has the Minister of Finance seen the forecast from Treasury of unemployment being 6.5 percent in 2016 and possibly reaching 7 percent in 2017?Hon BILL ENGLISH: You have always got to be a bit careful with quarter-to-quarter numbers. It turns out Treasury was wrong but it is pretty hard to be wronger than the Opposition finance spokesman.