10 October 2023
Chris McCashin
[FYI request #23995 email]
Dear Chris
Thank you for your Official Information Act request, received on 30 August 2023. You
requested:
Please provide a list of al of the government agencies that have and or / can
issue their own debt and borrow without going through Treasury. Kainga Ora are / had
been doing this.
Can you also please provide their current debt amounts - think KO has $12.1B in debt.
And can you tel me how this is taken into account when Treasury release the
accounts.
For example latest numbers released show debt is at $73B - does this take into
account the $12.1B that KO has in debt which would mean it is actual y $85B?
So can you please provide the current numbers
- Net Crown Debt
- Plus agency and amount of Debt
- Total Debt
On 27 September 2023, I extended the timeframe for responding to your request by 10
working days and you were notified.
Information being released
A list of State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) and Crown entities with borrowings at
30 June 2023 is provided, along with the amount, within the Additional Financial
Information section of the Financial Statements of the Government for the year ending
30 June 2023. Crown entity borrowings total ed $48.1 bil ion (which includes Kiwi
Group Capital Limited and
), while SOE borrowings total ed $11.7 bil ion.
These amounts include borrowings with third parties as wel as borrowings through
New Zealand Debt Management (NZDM). Please refer to the link under Information
publicly available below.
Information on whether Government reporting agencies have issued securities can be
found on the New Zealand Exchange website. Please refer to the fol owing link:
https://www.nzx.com/markets/NZDX.
The Treasury releases the Financial Statements of the Government which are reported
at a consolidated total Crown level, which takes into account the results of al
government reporting agencies. The borrowings of al government reporting agencies
are reflected as liabilities on the statement of financial position of the Government.
However, transactions between government reporting agencies are eliminated on
consolidation (for example ACC holds debt instruments issued by the Treasury) and so
the statement of financial position only reflects the borrowings with third parties. At 30
June 2023, total borrowings were $226.8 bil ion.
For fiscal strategy purposes, the Government has key fiscal indicators which are also
reported in the financial statements released by the Treasury. At 30 June 2023 net debt
was $71.4 bil ion, which included $17.5 bil ion of Crown entity borrowings (including
$12.4 bil ion of
borrowings).
At Budget 2022, net debt replaced net core Crown debt
headline net debt indicator. The coverage of net debt is wider than net core Crown debt
as it includes core Crown advances, Crown entity borrowings (excluding Kiwi Group
Capital Limited) and the financial assets and borrowings of the NZ Super Fund.
Therefore, the Crown entity borrowings (excluding Kiwi Group Capital Limited) listed in
the Additional Financial Information of the financial statements are incorporated within
the net debt balance, however borrowings of SOEs are excluded. A historic time series
of net debt can be found in the Financial Statements of the Government for the year
ending 30 June 2023 and further information about the change in the net debt indicator,
and its coverage, can be found in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update 2022 on
pages 38 and 39 (refer to the links under Information publicly available below).
Information publicly available
The fol owing information is covered by your request and is publicly available on the
Treasury website:
Item Date
Document Description
Website Address
1
Thursday, 5 Oct 2023
Financial Statements of the
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publi
Government of New Zealand for
cations/year-end/financial-
the Year Ended 30 June 2023
statements-2023
2
Thursday, 19 May
Budget Economic and Fiscal
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publi
2022
Update 2022
cations/efu/budget-economic-and-
fiscal-update-2022
Accordingly, I have refused your request for the documents listed in the above table
under section 18(d) of the Official Information Act:
the information requested is or wil soon be publicly available.
In making my decision, I have considered the public interest considerations in section
9(1) of the Official Information Act.
This reply addresses the information you requested. You have the right to ask the
Ombudsman to investigate and review my decision.
Yours sincerely
Hon Grant Robertson
Minister of Finance
