As the first Budget since last year’s election as well as all the pandemic chaos, maybe it’s not surprising that Budget 2021 is a cautious one, emphasising wellbeing and aiming to stimulate sufficient activity to drive growth, spending, and confidence.
Tagged ‘securing our recovery’, welfare support is highlighted. For business, a bundle of economic recovery measures unpack into training, infrastructure, and transformation plans in targeted industry sectors.
Health and Welfare
Total expenditure on health in the next financial year is budgeted at $24b, including $968m in capital investment, largely allocated to capital investment in facilities, infrastructure, and technology of District Health Boards.
A $4.7b increase in new health operating funding is forecast across four years. All benefit rates will increase by $20 a week from 1 July 2021…
Industry, infrastructure and housing
Long-term plans are being run through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, to increase productivity across 7 areas of the economy.
So far, Industry Transformation Plans (ITPs) have been developed for the agritech and construction sectors, and are currently being developed for digital technologies, advanced manufacturing, food and beverage and forestry and wood processing sectors.
Education, training and employment
Just over $1b of new operating funding is committed to education along with just under $730m of capital funding over 10 years.
$44m for a digital skills training programme over two years will help provide core digital skills training to up to 60,000 small businesses, with supporting advisory services to help 30,000 businesses create digital business action plans.
