Chief financial officers at some of New Zealand’s largest companies say the Coalition Government lacks a clear economic strategy and is too focused on cost-cutting and appeasing its minor partners.
These executives are responsible for managing a company’s finances, including overseeing investment decisions, controlling spending, arranging borrowing, and managing risks.
The ‘Mood of the CFO’ survey, compiled by recruitment firm Hunter Campbell and Infometrics, found most saw some opportunities for growth after a difficult year.
Only half had met or exceeded their targets and almost all expected ongoing macroeconomic, market, and regulatory challenges.
But CFOs who responded to the survey reported having “little faith” that the Government understood the need for tax policy reform and a big picture economic strategy.
Almost 80% believed government policies need to change to accelerate progress for businesses, although 56% also thought existing policies were “generally” supportive.
While 71% of these CFOs felt growth was a high priority for the government, 68% said there was unlikely to be any meaningful policy changes in the next year.
“There is a general consensus that the NZ government needs to do more to support business and accelerate progress, but that working with government to achieve that is not straightforward,” the report said.
Asked which policy settings needed reform, 30% of CFOs wanted more tax incentives to stimulate business investment, attract foreign capital, and support small enterprises.
“Respondents emphasise the need for policies that encourage capital investment, provide depreciation uplifts, and offer tax deductions for new assets, aiming to drive economic growth and increase business confidence,” the report said.
Another 19% of respondents pointed to the Government’s “lack of strategic vision and coherence in policy-making” in areas such as infrastructure, healthcare, and immigration.
The report said CFOs highlighted the Government’s “defensive mindset, focus on cost-cutting, and prioritisation of minority party policies over national needs, which they believe hinder long-term growth and development in New Zealand.”
Rome is burning
While not necessarily a majority view, this echoes criticism from business lobby groups who complain the Coalition is constantly bogged down in culture war distractions and hoping the economy will just fix itself.
The Newmarket Business Association criticised the Act Party’s Brooke Van Velden for spending her time reordering English and Te Reo words on passports, while the Auckland Chamber called for urgent fiscal stimulus to restart economic growth.
Viv Beck, chief executive of Auckland Central’s business association, told the Sunday Star Times she couldn’t understand why the Government was focusing on certain issues while “Rome was burning”.
This survey confirms many finance executives, who hold New Zealand’s corporate purse strings, agree with many of these complaints.
Recovery close?
Asked about this on Wednesday, Finance Minister Nicola Willis said everybody wanted to see the economy recover and investment levels to increase.
“It’s also the case that I hear consistently that people want to see the Government focused on the economy, on law and order, on health and on education, and that's why the National Party focuses on those things,” she said.
In a speech to Parliament later that day, she promised a stronger cyclical economic recovery was just three weeks away — citing a new set of forecasts from ANZ.
“The bank's economists say that the economic recovery in New Zealand has been delayed by tariff uncertainty but not derailed,” Willis said.
“While GDP growth almost certainly took a hit in the middle of this year, following tariff announcements, ANZ sees a stronger recovery taking hold from the fourth quarter of this year onwards as the full transmission of monetary policy to growth is realised.”
David Seymour, speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister in Parliament, said the country was emerging from a cyclical recession caused by high interest rates .
“What happens subsequent to that, is that interest rates fall, people have more money at the end of the week—they spend more—and you see businesses starting to hire again. As I go around New Zealand, I hear many stories that the better part of that cycle, under this Government, is coming into fruition,” Seymour said.
Survive till ‘25 ...‘26
Many voters are frustrated by the lack of economic growth, having expected the recovery to be felt at the start of 2025. A Taxpayers’ Union–Curia poll from August found a majority thought the country was headed in the wrong direction.
The Labour Party has been capitalising on this sour mood. It has seen a six percentage point increase in its polling relative to the 2023 election and could plausibly win in 2026.
But it is yet to announce any policy and will face more challenges when pushed to explain how it would do things better than the Coalition, and how it would pay for it.
The CFO survey had a piece of good news on that front. Some 8% of respondents said broadening capital gains taxes was the most needed piece of reform, while another 6% want fixes for “housing affordability and property speculation”.
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said business leaders around the country had sent him a “resounding” message that New Zealand needed to broaden its tax base.
“They also want to see NZ’s investment focus shift away from residential housing, and our obsession with residential housing as a form of investment, to one that goes back to viewing residential properties primarily as a home, and that we instead focus our investment on the productive economy,” he said.
However, there were fewer CFOs calling for a capital gains tax than there were asking for “high” corporate and personal income taxes to be lowered (15%).
13 Comments
Great to have confirmation. NAct is lost
Yes. but so too are the media reporting them.
Globally, we are well into the beginnings of permanent de-growth. Unmeasured by economics (no physical inputs, no physical outputs), but happening irregardless.
Interview a whole lot of people holding parcels, but increasingly unable to find chairs. They blame the chair-putters-out - but the backroom is empty and some of the existing chairs are falling apart (entropy is inexorable). Changing the putters-out won't change the malaise.
But or media are doggedly going to imply that this is so. Trace that to the fact that they're holding parcels themselves...
Globally, we are well into the beginnings of permanent de-growth. Unmeasured by economics (no physical inputs, no physical outputs), but happening irregardless.
A few meteorites hitting us might solve some of these problems. Until that time, we're going to have to look for solutions, however futile they may be. I'm soaking in your pessimism Power.
Just as long as you’re not soaking up the resources XD
Do any of them have comprehensive economic policies that make sense and will improve things and help us rebuild better - or even change our circumstances at all?
Is doctrinal rigidity preventing thoughtful, data-driven decision making for all parties?
Yes. TOP proposed a revenue neutral Land Value Tax. Balanced by lowering income tax. Recommended by a 2010 Victoria University working group
So much so, that when Jacinda created her own Tax Working Group their mandate was to come up with anything but Land Tax
Tax the rentier economy, not the productive one. It's that simple
No, it isn't.
Money - including tax - is a proxy. It is NOT a store of 'wealth'.
Ultimately, money (in whoever's hands, is an expectation that it can be exchanged for processed parts of the planet (there being no other source of anything). That expectation comes in two parts; energy and resources (sometimes referred-to as materials). We are cresting the peak of the supply of both, and attempting to parry a never-greater entropy-demand (vi a never-bigger collection of decaying infrastructure, all requiring energy and resources too). Bluntly put, society as constructed can increasingly not 'afford' itself.
Yes, rentiering will be increasingly resented - and increasingly untenable - as the surplus energy going into the system reduces. Triage is alread happening. I've long argued that usury - the charging of interest - cannot fit the inevitable and permanent de-growth phase. Rentiering needs to be outlawed, therefore, not taxed. The latter allows it to continue, just on-charging the tax-burden.
Until the tenant activities can't pay. Which is why the planet is a quadrillion in debt, and mounting, with no way out. So a re-set is coming. Instead of a system of exponentially-increasing forward bets on an exponentially-decreasing planet, we need a proxy-system which is indexed to the latter.
But nobody - on any rung of the existing ladder - wants to remove the ladder. So we'll run until it falls over.
Yes, rentiering will be increasingly resented - and increasingly untenable - as the surplus energy going into the system reduces. Triage is alread happening. I've long argued that usury - the charging of interest - cannot fit the inevitable and permanent de-growth phase. Rentiering needs to be outlawed, therefore, not taxed. The latter allows it to continue, just on-charging the tax-burden.
Until the tenant activities can't pay
I think what is happening in Nepal is what happens when the serfs are exhausted and have no other options. I think the Western ruling elite needs to be paying attention to this.
Tax the rentier economy, not the productive one. It's that simple
Yes, but this discussion is always relegated to soundbites mainly because nobody has any idea as to how it can be implemented. Few people want to admit that it's all about the Ponzi because they know they'll never be invited to the BBQ again and will become outcasts in society. You cannot shift the mentality towards an attitude that we need to be productive animals. This is where East Asia has an advantage over Aotearoa and the Anglosphere. It's also why we outsource much of our production to them and we just consume what they produce.
We lost months to the in doomed-in-advanced treaty principles bill. This year's distraction the the COVID Spanish Inquisition. The tail wagged the dog, which will be put down.
I wonder if any party has come out shining from the TP bill debacle.. ACT pushed it and coalition allowed it, despite all knowing it would go nowhere. It seems to be the opposite of the savings and get stuff done rhetoric they espouse.
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said business leaders around the country had sent him a “resounding” message that New Zealand needed to broaden its tax base.
“They also want to see NZ’s investment focus shift away from residential housing, and our obsession with residential housing as a form of investment, to one that goes back to viewing residential properties primarily as a home, and that we instead focus our investment on the productive economy,
I will give Chipmunk 9 out of 10 for delivering the msg and 0 for the ability to express his own opinion.
Also, I don't believe all 'business leaders' think the Ponzi needs to play 2nd fiddle. The banks are our leading businesses and the Ponzi is their bread and butter so why would they want to move to anything to beyond what works for them?
You can leave the word 'coherent' out of the phrase 'lack coherent economic strategy'.
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