Coronavirus: Federated Farmers applauds Govt response

Federated Farmers president Katie Milne. Photo / Supplied

Federated Farmers says it applauds the Government on its response to an unprecedented situation.

In a statement released today, Federated Farmers President Katie Milne said:

"We support this package as being decisive and pragmatic. Coming on top of the Reserve Bank's similar response yesterday, New Zealand has in the past two days delivered a big stimulus, and quickly.

"The Government has clearly decided that rather than give everyone a bit of extra money, to instead throw the kitchen sink at those most directly affected, and our most vulnerable people in the hope this will contain the impact on the wider economy," said Milne.

"The strong recognition of both the importance and the vulnerability of small businesses in the package is particularly pleasing. There are a large number of small tourism and family businesses that rely on passing tourists in our rural communities, and they are already hurting."

"These businesses and their staff are in our rural communities and we stand by them.
It's also great that the needs of small businesses that cannot operate from home, and whose employees cannot work from home have been targeted for assistance - these people and businesses are the backbone of our rural, provincial, and urban communities alike."

The announced tax changes would be very useful, especially from a small business perspective said Milne.

"These include the reinstatement of depreciation deductions for commercial and industrial buildings, increasing the threshold for provisional tax, waiving interest on some late tax payments, and immediate deductions for low value assets, several of which were recommended by the Tax Working Group.

"We would like to see some commitment around prolonging the visas of migrant workers in New Zealand, to ensure that our primary producers can continue to produce.

"Ongoing monitoring of the effectiveness of the Government's approach will be important - if things deteriorate further, more generalised support will likely be needed.

"The 14 May Budget will be crucial as will the Reserve Bank's next scheduled OCR review on 13 May."