On Wednesday night, Tax Traders were delighted to host an exclusive panel discussion with Sir Bill English, Kate Parsons and Sam Stubbs as part of an intimate event exploring innovative solutions to unlock liquidity for New Zealand businesses.
Our panellists delved into critical topics such as private sector and public policy levers to address liquidity changes and growth constraints, and where to find pockets of idle capital to generate transformative change.Some key insights from the event included:
- We don’t need policy change to create innovation.
- Government and business need to be more comfortable with more risk. We have emerged from a zero-risk outlook at the base and this does not encourage innovation.
- Government should take an ‘enabler’ approach by providing a framework for New Zealand’s private sector to build the digital and physical infrastructure which will help New Zealand businesses access funding and financing.
- Limited access to funding and financing, especially at the SME level, continues to be a problem for New Zealand businesses and leads to a dangerous short-term decision mindset.
- Kiwisavers can play an active role in unlocking capital and funding local infrastructure and businesses with local money, without offshoring the profits.
Our hope is that with our new products such as our tax-backed credit facility, Taxi, we can begin to unlock this ‘lazy money’ and make a huge difference to Aotearoa.
But we know we are only one small part of the solution.
There is much that can be done across both the public and private sector – and it was great to host an event where those who work in key treasury roles could discuss with our panel unique ways to unlock liquidity for New Zealand businesses to put ‘lazy money’ to work.