Govt has about $12b to spend on delta relief: economist

Stephen Toplis said the government has no need to raise more debt yet. (Image: supplied)

Wed, 13 Oct 2021

The government's accounts show it has $11.5 billion in cash "to play with before it needs to contemplate going to the market for more funding", said BNZ head of research Stephen Toplis.The accounts showed the deficit for the year ended June before asset gains and losses was $4.6b, less than a third of forecast and only a fifth of the previous year's deficit.The residual cash deficit fell to just $13.8b compared with the May forecast of $25.3b."Additionally, the accounts show that, as at June 30, $4.7b of the $50b covid re...

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