Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has announced that the Government will take advantage of low interest rates and borrow more so they can increase spending in infrastructure. Details will come later.

RNZ: Government signals big new infrastructure spend, looser purse strings

Finance Minister Grant Robertson flagged extra spending in his speech to the Labour Party’s annual conference in Whanganui.

He said Cabinet had committed to a boost to infrastructure as part of the short to medium term spending plan.

“We are currently finalising the specific projects that the package will fund but I can tell you this – it will be significant.”

The government had heeded the calls from the construction industry for “greater certainty” about the pipeline of transport projects from 18 months’ time, he said.

“We will give that certainty”.

It made sense to take advantage of low government debt and the very low cost of borrowing, said Mr Robertson.

“Right now, we can borrow at an interest rate of 1.3 percent for ten years. Just think about that for a minute – when we came in to office, this was up at 3 percent,” he told delegates.

“We have the lowest borrowing costs in New Zealand’s history, so it is time to invest.”

There will be no details until the next update on the government books – the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update on December 11 – when Mr Robertson will release more details about the areas of spending, and the price tag.

Greens are keen (they have been wanting this for some time):

It should give the economy a good boost for election year. A first term Government overseeing and stimulating a thriving economy will be hard to defeat.