Finance Minister Bill English has ruled out the further selldowns in shares of the partly privatised state owned assets sold over the last year, including Air New Zealand, Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy.
"We have no plans after the election to sell more," English told reporters at a joint news conference with Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce. They were releasing a 91 page progress report on the Government's Business Growth Agenda of various micro-economic reforms aimed at improving the economy's economic growth potential.
"If you look at the crown's balance sheet, the assets that are there are not amenable to sell-down," he said. He pointed to various financial and structural problems with the likes of NZ Post, Solid Energy, Kiwirail and Landcorp.
He said Landcorp was restricted by negotiations over treaty settlements. Further initial public offerings (IPO) through the Government's mixed ownership model were not on the government's agenda.
"We're not going to be looking at large IPOs of state assets, and there aren't really assets that are suitable for it," he said.
Elsewhere, English said the Business Growth Agenda was a collection of microeconomic reforms. He said its aim was to lift the country's economic growth limits, which the Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler said last week was currently around 2.25-2.5%, beyond which the economy started to generate inflationary pressures that required higher interest rates.
"Over time I think we'll see those estimates lift," English said of the economy's growth limits.
He noted it had fallen over recent years, "but over the next four to five years you'd expect those to be lifting."
English and Joyce said the aim of the Business Growth Agenda was to lift wage growth from its current 13 year low.
"That's the point of them," he said.
The median increase in ordinary time salaries and wages for those who received a wage increase was 2.5% in the year to the September quarter, the lowest since the December quarter of 2000. Only 54% of wage and salary earners got a wage increase over the year to the September quarter, down from 56% a year earlier and the lowest seen in almost three years.
Joyce said workers should look at how low inflation meant real wage growth was relatively stronger.
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