By Alex Tarrant
Labour is looking at policies to provide incentives for capital investment in export businesses as it shifts its policy platform further from where it was previously in government.
Election 2011 policies like a capital gains tax, reintroduction of research and development tax credits, and changes to monetary policy are being followed up this term with ideas about tax breaks and accelerated depreciation allowances for enterprises, investors, regions and sectors, Finance spokesman David Parker says.
Parker today advanced on comments made last week by Labour Party leader David Shearer calling for new thinking from government on how to better help regional businesses access capital for development.
"We should consider incentives which help our exporters. Some should be targeted at the enterprise and others at investors," Parker said in a speech to the Engineers, Employers Printing and Manufacturing Union on Thursday morning.
"Some of these will be economy wide, some not," he said.
The Government needed to grapple with the provision of capital to regional New Zealand.
"Beyond the dominant pastoral farming sector, I’m not sure that innovative businesses in our heartland have enough access to capital at an affordable price for development," Parker said.
"At the last election, we adopted an idea from the NZ Institute who recommended that some investment in innovative export companies ought to be tax deductible – to encourage investment in the technology that brings high value jobs and exports," he said.
"Should we also give consideration to accelerated depreciation, to encourage more capital investment in plant that improves productivity and creates jobs?
"Maybe our heartland could benefit from regional lending initiatives. How is this best achieved? Should we also consider special incentives for our most depressed areas?" he said.
12 Comments
It looks like Labour get it. Well done David Parker. Bill English, pull your socks up:
I'm afraid Billy Bob can't do that Les, everytime Billy pulls his socks up, the garter effect causes restricted posterior blood flow, resulting in cerebral daily planner going into sleep mode.......In fact , I'd advocate jandals for Billy, free up the thought processor , relax, not to mention put Overseas Investors at ease , knowing their dealing with a yokel.....
A bit of staw hanging from the corner of the mouth wouldn't go a miss either....you get the picture.
Hey Les did you read Bolly's out n out confession that he knows squat about macro-economics....and here we all been worried he was just lazy...?
It's admirable in intent , Count ...... but they labour under the delusion that NZ Inc doesn't currently earn enough from exports ....
...... earning more , squeezing the cows harder , whatever ..... will only lead to the government of the day upping their spending even more ...
Hey , what're yer think of the new band wot's sweeping the land , with record audience appreciation ,.. " Jolly Kid & the Gnats " .... oddly enough , they only sing one tune ( and just four words ! ) ...
... " steady as she goes ..... steady as she goes ...." ...... Back from their debut 2008 tour , and onto their second album now , also called " Steady As She Goes " .... the first song starts with ..
...... oh , I think that you can guess how it goes ...
Cheers GBH....being Friday , get amongst them and raise a little hell....maybe with the weekend coming Bernard might just get his tackle out ..pop on some boomer bait, sit back in his swivel chair screaming .....Oh Lordy, i'm hooked up ...! I've hooked the motherload...! ...go you good thing...!
To develop a “manufacturing culture” (real production) in this country it needs the majority of parliamentarians – at least. I doubt, if they understand correlations to succeed in economics. One only has to listen to the frontbenchers of the National party with their stupid drilling/ mining obsession.
Better it rerms of brevity, but not in content.
Define non-returning. Having seen what you pour out, it'll be a fiscal return.
Who does the things that have to be done, but don't can't turn a profit, then?
Oh yeah, they can't happen. Why? The base-line answer is that you need to repay the debt you chose to take on, in the hope of getting rich, yes?
I prefer a society which identifies what has to be done, and does it. Unless you agree that 'returns' can be measured in non-fiscal terms.
The details will be interesting. Governments picking winners have not always been successful (nor has the private sector- think South Canterbury Finance); while pushing certain regions over others can be like pushing water uphill, unless the region is a perfectly sensible place to in fact grow a business from a resource and infrastructure point of view. Tax breaks and incentives can be fine; although open to gaming and abuse. Do tourism, or import substitution count?
Nevertheless most successful small countries do have government involvement in businesses of scale; as long as they are run commercially and at reasonable arms length.
The plans at least are more substantial than English and Joyce's rebranding PR exercise announced yesterday.
All parties need to grapple with a macro economic structure that kneecaps New Zealand through an overvalued exchange rate as soon as we start to be competitive as a whole. But I accept a competitive exchange rate is unlikely to be enough on its own.
If a Government looks after its people then the economy will look after itself. It has always worked. Just because you look after business, aka the National government, does not mean the people will benefit. With globalizatiith other people in the world might benefit but it will not be the people of New Zealand
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