Our debt reality

The economy, it is fair to say, is very gradually improving after the short-lived recession, although the position so far as internal and external debt is concerned remains grave.

New Zealand, fortunately, is nowhere near in as bad a way as Britain, whose economy is practically in ruins, and where after last week's budget, every household will be worse off as the new government tries to rebuild.

A vast range of cuts has been imposed to try to reduce government spending and pay off the colossal debt load.

New Zealand has dealt with similar problems in budgets of the past two years, but beyond the immediate future the economy faces what may turn out to be a difficulty of very serious proportions: a lack of capital.

The signs are already obvious.

The long-lasting property bubble, into which so much finance company venture capital and personal savings have been sunk, has yet again proved to be a chimera so far as long-term benefit to the economy and job creation are concerned.

The kind of public service job creation the Clark government indulged in has also proved to be a serious drag on the economy: since 2004 more than half of all new jobs were in public administration, health, and education.

Over the same period 40,000 jobs disappeared from agriculture, horticulture, forestry, manufacturing, and transport - what some have described as the "earning side " of the economy, the tradeable sector.

Public service jobs in health and education now make up an extraordinary third of all jobs, according to the Government.

Nor is there much comfort in recent statistics which show that total employment increased by just 1%, or 22,000 jobs, in the March quarter.

Yet even this was the largest quarterly increase since the recession began.

The Government is pinning its hopes on the ambitious Treasury forecast of 170,000 new jobs in four years, and since the cap on the public service is supposedly rigorous, most of these will have to arise from the private productive sector.

Here, the Government's expectations are restrained by at least two important factors: the lack of reasonably priced venture capital for small to middle-sized businesses, and the replacement of human workers by technological advances.

This can easily be observed in the State's own enterprises, which have a present value of about $50 billion in commercial assets.

They are subject to similar forces, and to the effects of technology and competition.

Some, such as Solid Energy, urgently need more capital to maintain or improve their situation.

Where is it to come from? Some, like New Zealand Post, are losing market share to technology.

What is its future? The private sector is in possibly a worse position, since trading banks are much more risk averse to business lending; most of our leading companies are actually overseas-owned or influenced, and New Zealand is not necessarily a priority for growth for their directors; local lending innovations of the past, such as the Rural Bank and the Development Finance Corporation, no longer exist and are in any case politically unfashionable.

There is some prospect of help, however, in the recent disclosure that the NZ Superannuation Fund is looking to invest in more local assets including land, smaller high-growth companies and tribal businesses.

As at the end of April, the fund had only 32% of its assets (including cash) invested here.

It wants to invest another $500 million locally.

That will help, but the Government cannot be enthusiastic about more borrowing externally for local business expansion since, as Bill English told Parliament this week: "New Zealand's external liabilities have risen almost 40% to $167 billion over the past five years.

The cost of servicing this is more than 5% of GDP.

At almost 90% of GDP, our external liabilities are similar to those of Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Hungary, and Greece."

And as the Reserve Bank Governor, Alan Bollard, noted earlier this month, the financing consequences of years of running external deficits mean that foreigners have more than twice as much invested in New Zealand as we have invested overseas.

"Our net external liabilities cannot keep increasing with impunity. Ultimately either the markets will penalise us by requiring a larger premium for its continued funding, and/or the sheer size of servicing our obligations will become an intolerable burden to the country.

"But rather than await such painful punishments, we should be looking to improve the situation."

Treasury forecasts show steady economic growth of about 3% a year and that is an extremely modest number.

Clearly, though, there will be no new "value-added" jobs unless and until the confidence of businesses to invest and to employ is restored and investors are willing to risk their money.

Our collective failure to do that will inevitably mean all taxpayers will face what the British and other European disaster economies are now confronting.