Posts Tagged ‘investment’

The Vision

The government today announced the $500m investment programme on country's infrastructures, including more capial injection on new schools and roads. This will be part of the $9 billion stimulus package.

I have very little knowledge on that $9 billion total package, but today's announcement amused me a little - it may sounds like "new" schools and roads, but in fact most of the them were already planned, and I believe some projects are possibly already on the book. All the government did is to "bring them forward", accelerate the speed.

Now this is bit strange, other countries invest on new things, or improvement of current infrastructure, but we just could not bother to do that - do we really need to bring forward a construction for a bridge so Aucklanders can have a nice holiday without worrying the traffic bottleneck? Or maybe New Zealand is just too small so  there isn't much we can invest on? I'm sure you don't agree with this.

Or even worse, maybe the government is just cutting and pasting some of the planned spendings and relabel it as part of the "package"?

Crisis also means opportunity, an opportunity that could enable us to grow even faster, stronger after the bad times. However, I failed to see how this infrastructure spending plan will help us doing that - where's the investment on new technologies? I don't expect nats to invest on "green stuffs"  , but energy efficient and electrified car/train aren't all about green?

Uncertainty on energy cost was, and still is a huge barrier that have restrained growth in NZ, high and fluctuating  oil prices hurt just about every one bad, and rising demand of electricity requires either more water dam, or an easier and cheaper option of improving what we got now and make it more efficient.

So where's that man with a vision? Sure I cannot find him here.