On the front pages of the UK Times today it reports the latest IMF growth figures that came out yesterday, on 10th October. Just a few days ago our PM insisted on Mike Hosking's Newstalk ZB show that NZ's GDP growth numbers put us higher then "every country other than Japan". I couldn't work out what he was talking about.
In the papers today in NZ I cannot find the IMF figures reported anywhere. So what do they (see link below) say about NZ's ranking. Are we second in the world after Japan, like the PM told Hosking? In 2023 the IMF ranks our GDP growth as 157th out of 189 countries, near the bottom. As if that isn't bad enough, in 2024 it has put us at 180th, almost AT the bottom.
Are the Business Editors at Newshub, Stuff & NZ Herald going to call the PM to account for his false claim on Newstalk ZB that our GDP growth put us ahead of "every country other than Japan"? It was misinformation on steroids. Hipkins is the guy who went berserk about misinformation about the Covid vaccine, yet I cannot conceive of a greater piece of misinformation than telling 5 million Kiwis a few days before a General Election our country is ranked top of the world on GDP growth figures when we're ranked almost bottom.
How is he getting away with it?
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