Brad Olsen: Infometrics Principal Economist outlines predictions for Budget Day 2025

It's less than two days to go until Budget Day 2025, and experts are outlining their predictions.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has hinted this won't be a 'lolly scramble' and plenty of cuts will have to take place.

Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen explains further,

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just two more sleeps until Budget Day. Brad Olson's favorite
day of the year, and he's with us. Now, Hey, Brad,
good evening. Is it really your favorite day?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's definitely up there. I mean, you know, birthdays and
Christmas are good. But when you sort of get locked
in a room with a huge amount of information to
go through and put your economic wits to a test,
it's always important.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Yeah, with the time pressure, I mean, it is just
so intense and fun. Okay, what are you going to
be looking out for. What's the one thing that you
do not know about you want to understand and this
is the thing that you go straight to.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Look Infrastructure in my mind only because I think it'll
be more than one thing. I don't think there'll just
be one announcement. And there's already been some right, I mean,
there's been a lot of money that's been put towards
the likes of defense and similar but government, you know,
continues to talk about how much infrastructure it wants to invest,
and we can see it around the country that there
is a desperate need for that across the likes of

(00:53):
you know, hospitals and schools, but also the likes of
you know, water pipes, roads, everything else that keep the
economy moving. So that's going to be my big focus
what stuff is in there, because if the government can
unlock a greater level of infrastructure investment, that's the sort
of stuff that does get the economy motoring. It creates
or keeps more people in construction jobs to start with,
and when those facilities, when those assets are up and running,

(01:15):
is a whole lot more that they can provide. And
I think, particularly looking out at likes of provincial and
regional New Zealand, there's some real opportunities to supercharge stuff there.
So that's the big one. But of course, as we've
talked about, I think for probably the last two weeks
on the show now that the key we say a
question is still coming up time and time again. So
although it seems pretty close that something is going to
come out there, just the details will want to get

(01:36):
across what they mean for people.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Back in you know. One thing that struck me as
being slightly different this time around is that last in budgets.
Previously we've always looked out for the lollies like who's
getting what freeb but this time there is no sense
of that, and it is more what's been cut. Would
you agree with that?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Indeed, And to be fair, that was a part of
last year, but we had a pretty good read already
for the government at that point because they'd said, you know,
government ministries need to take a six and a half
percent baseline cap this time around. It's not quite across
the board everyone needs to find savings. It's more that
there are big, quite chunky projects or sort of proposals
that were already there that might now be coming out.

(02:15):
So you're definitely right in terms of what's not going
to be in there for the future. But I also
think slightly different with this budget is there seems to
be a few more sort of non financial announcements that
the government wants to make as part of it. So
they might be funding some new proposal, but they're also saying, look,
we're going to make this other change that might not
necessarily cost a whole lot of money, but if we
can make a financial shift plus a regulatory shift, change

(02:39):
some of the rules around this to make things go
fast or and not have so many barriers in the way,
then that also seems to be a part I think
of the government strategy this budget. I mean that the
Finance Minister has highlighted that this is all around growth.
So again I think there's now a real expectation there.
We'll be wanting to see better growth expectations coming from
the Treasury now because of the government is getting serious

(03:00):
about growing growth and they need to get Treasury over
the line. If they can convince the Treasury guys over
the line, then we're definitely back in business. Good stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Hat's always good to talk to you, Brad. We'll see
you there. Brad Olsen, Infametrix Principal principal Economists.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
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