A higher than expected corporate tax take helped give the New Zealand government an operating surplus almost triple what had been forecast in the eight months ending February, the Treasury said Thursday.
The operating surplus of 1.41 billion NZ dollars (982.91 million U.S. dollars) compared with a surplus of 498 million NZ dollars forecast in December last year, said a statement from the Treasury.
Core tax revenue was 1 percent higher than forecast for the eight months, driven mainly by corporate tax. Core expenses at 50.3 billion NZ dollars were 0.8 percent lower than forecast.
Tax revenues from the last year were 7.7 percent ahead of the same period last year, with all categories of tax growing alongside economic growth, Finance Minister Steven Joyce said in a statement.
"The government has collected 3.5 billion NZ dollars more in tax in the first eight months of this year compared to last year," Joyce said. "It's also good to see us making progress on our debt target, with net debt currently at 23.5 percent of GDP (gross domestic product)," Joyce said.
"Reducing net debt to around 20 percent of GDP by 2020-2021 will improve the resilience of the New Zealand economy to future shocks." (1 New Zealand dollar = 0.7 U.S. dollar)
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