Finance Minister Grant Robertson leading his six ministers as he leaves after his Wellbeing Budget 2019 presentation. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Finance Minister Grant Robertson leading his six ministers as he leaves after his Wellbeing Budget 2019 presentation. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The 2019 Budget allocated $9 billion more in spending than the 2018 budget.
New Zealand Herald Data Editor Chris Knox has created a high level interactive to look at the significance of $9 billion more being spent.
The Ministry of Defence had the largest percentage increase in funding, followed closely by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. While the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Development received that largest increases in actually funding.
The Ministry of Education received $614 million more to spend next year, but this increase is not much more than inflation and population growth.
The spending allocated in the 2019 budget was $110,785,615,000.
On Thursday, May 30, the Labour, New Zealand First, and Green government announced
its second budget. The total amount budgeted was $111 billion.
In comparison, the government allocated
$102 billion for the last budget. So let's explore where the differences come from.
Thinking about $111 billion is not meaningful for most of us. Another way to approach
the budget is to look at what the average allocation for each New Zealander is.
However, to compare the budgets fairly we need to consider inflation.
Inflation between March 2018 and March 2019 was 1.1 per cent. So we
increase the 2018 amount accordingly.
Budgets do not need to track population exactly, but budgets should grow as the population does.
Population growth between May 2018 and May 2019 was 1.4 per cent.
So for the sake of comparison we can adjust the 2018 budget to the 2019 population.
This provides an estimate of the real increase in the budget between 2018 and 2019.
Let's start to drill down into the budget to see where the changes are coming from and
what is going to be effected.
The budget divided between 40 departments.
The amounts allocated to each department in the 2019 budget are shown
on the chart below.
The 2019 values ...
The 2018 values ...
While looking at the total amounts allocated to each department
is useful, it is also helpful to look at the percentage change in the amount
allocated.
When looking at percentage differences we can also consider
inflation and population change.
Dollar amounts
Inflation adjusted
Inflation and population adjusted
When only the raw dollar amounts are considered the 2019 budget is
a 7.8 per cent increase over the 2018 budget. But the real increase
is somewhere between 6.6 per cent and 4.5 per cent depending on the importance
assigned to keeping pace with population growth.
The next chart displays percentage changes for each of the 40 departments in the budget.
The percentage change in inflation
and population growth are indicated.
While percentage changes highlight the changes in departmental funding
relative to original values, they can also increase the
promenance of small departments such as Office of the Ombudsman.
The final chart shows the change in the actual amounts
allocated to each department.
