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EBOSS Blog
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The EBOSS Team
12 May 2020

Reflection on Treasury Forecasts

Back in mid-April Treasury put together a series of scenarios to assist with painting a picture on the impact of COVID-19. With the country entering Level 2 in the next few days, we are most closely aligned with Scenario 1a, so I thought it would be useful to add a quick snapshot.

Scenario 1a Assumptions:

  • Level 4 — 1 month
  • Level 3 — 1 month
  • Levels 2/1 — 10 months
  • Borders are closed to foreign visitors
  • Government fiscal support $40B
  • Budgeted loss of $16B for the year ending 31 March 2021
  • See table of forecast figures for Scenario 1a below (I have highlighted the Real GDP figures).

Under this scenario, the following would happen:

  • The economy would decline 4.5% in the 2020 June year, decline 0.5% in the 2021 June year, and then rise by 8% in the 2022 June year.
  • The unemployment rate would peak at 8.5%, before recovering to 5.5% in 2021.

Fiscal policy responses

Now we are familiar with operating under Levels 3 and 4, compare your experiences with Treasury assumptions on national output. Throughout its modelling, Treasury assumed:

  • Alert Level 1 reduces output by 5-10% from normal
  • Alert Level 2 reduces output by 10-15% from normal
  • Alert Level 3 reduces output by 25% from normal
  • Alert Level 4 reduces output by 40% from normal

I think everyone would agree that 85-90% of "normal" output under Level 2 would be a great result!

For more information on Scenario 1a, there is a summary article on the different scenarios on interest.co.nz or look at the full Treasury report to digest the 15 pages of detail.


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