New IMF data ranks NZ's GDP growth as worst out of 159 nations in world along with Equatorial Guinea

What has PM Hipkins done? The newly released IMF Regional Economic Outlooks say NZ is projected to be the worst performing economy in the entire world in 2024 in terms of GDP growth, with one exception, Equatorial Guinea, which has been ripped apart by conflict. No other time in our history has NZ been bottom of the planet.

The details? NZ is projected to be in & out of recession at 0.8% GDP growth in 2024. Growth for 34 Asia-Pacific nations is expected to be way higher, averaging 4.4% (see links below). The IMF Outlook for Western Hemisphere has figures for North & South America. NZ is bottom out of those 36 sovereign nations. (Puerto Rico is the only place worse, but it's a territory). The figures for 45 nations in Western & Eastern Europe again rank NZ bottom, with Italy. The Europe report is titled, "Taming Inflation Without a Recession". What would ours be? "Taming Inflation whilst Engineering a Recession"? Moreover, the African Regional Economic Outlook places NZ worse than all 44 nations there (Equatorial Guinea being the exception). The Middle East & Central Asia Regional Outlook doesn't give individual country figures, though their average growth is projected to be 3.5% in 2024, so looks like we'd be bottom of those countries as well.

Isn't it time our disgraced Finance Minister - who self-declared NZ's "world-beating" Covid health outcomes would go hand-in-hand with world-beating economic outcomes - takes responsibility & resigns? Isn't it time the Reserve Bank Governor resigns for printing $50 billion unnecessarily, causing inflation & then forcing NZ unnecessarily into recession? Will the whole sorry bunch of them keep blaming Putin & flooding for their failures? If it was all down to Putin, why is the entire world projected to outperform us in 2024? Weren't others impacted by Ukraine similarly? Of course they weren't. The impact of that war on NZ was less, since most of our energy is hydro & we import no food from Ukraine.

The PM doesn't add up. The Finance Minister won't add up. The Reserve Bank can't add up. They've gone and bust an amazing country. A lot of work now needs to be done to fix it.

Sources

Asia Pacific Region

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/APAC/Issues/2023/04/11/regional-economic-outlook-for-asia-and-pacific-april-2023

North, Central and South America

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/WH/Issues/2023/04/13/regional-economic-outlook-western-hemisphere-april-2023

Sub-Saharan Africa

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/SSA/Issues/2023/04/14/regional-economic-outlook-for-sub-saharan-africa-april-2023

Europe

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/EU/Issues/2023/04/09/regional-economic-outlook-for-europe-april-2023

Did the Gov't Fudge the Air NZ accounts to make us unable to work out its domestic monopoly powers?

Air NZ released its annual report yesterday, declaring bumper earnings of over half a billion dollars. Given the airline has a near monopoly on domestic routes, the only thing of interest to economists in the report is the earnings split between (non-competitive) domestic and (more competitive) international routes.

Call me stupid, but I was unable to find that number anywhere in the accounts. The report is 100 pages long, but the only really interesting number was nowhere to be found.

Is this standard practice for the airline industry? I looked up the Qantas 2022 Annual Report (below) and found that very number in two seconds, on page 19. The table is headed up "Segment Performance" and Qantas clearly gives the contribution to overall EBIT (Earnings before Interest and Tax) of its Domestic versus International services.

The Air NZ accounts only have strange references to unintelligible items like "domestic revenue passenger kilometers". But all we want to know is the contribution to that half billion $ headline profit (which appeared throughout the news, together with a PR campaign by the airline) that has come from taking advantage of its domestic monopoly powers.

Why is the most basic accounting number - one of tremendous economic significance to assessing the airlines performance - not to be found anywhere in the annual report?

Sources

http://nzx-prod-s7fsd7f98s.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/AIR/416946/401195.pdf

https://investor.qantas.com/FormBuilder/_Resource/_module/doLLG5ufYkCyEPjF1tpgyw/file/annual-reports/2022-Annual-Report.pdf