What We Do

The Treasury's overall vision is to be a world-class Treasury working for higher living standards for New Zealanders. We aim to raise the country's capacity to deliver on people's aspirations for a better quality of life, through making an impact on the issues that are important to New Zealand's economic performance and State sector management.

Guiding the Treasury's work is our focus on achieving three main outcomes, all of which are necessary to attaining higher living standards for New Zealanders:

• improved economic performance
• improved State sector performance, and
• a stable and sustainable macroeconomic environment.

The Treasury also has five core roles that underpin what we do:

• Economic role - concentrates on issues with policy implications that may have a significant and therefore pervasive impact on the performance of the economy as a whole.
• Financial role - concentrates on issues that have significant fiscal implications both now and in the longer term, and financial management and standards (including financial probity issues).
• Regulatory role - concentrates on improving the quality of government regulation with a particular focus on removing the barriers to growth and improving productivity.
• Central Agency role - concentrates on helping the Government develop its overall strategy and manage significant issues that emerge.
• Operational role - concentrates oncore operational functions such as those carried out by the New Zealand Debt Management Office (NZDMO) and NZECO. In the 2008/09 year this role expanded with the establishment of the wholesale and retail guarantee schemes and the National Infrastructure Unit.

As these roles suggest, the Treasury is uniquely placed to provide the Government with advice that integrates economic and financial perspectives including interests in institutions, macroeconomic performance and structural policy issues. We bring it together in a way that helps the Government focus on what really matters to raise living standards. We operate in partnership with other agencies that have more specific responsibilities, as well as our fellow Central Agencies to ensure that the public service overall is well placed to fulfil the Government's priorities.

The Treasury also engages with stakeholders across the public and private sectors to strengthen our analysis and to identify where our efforts to raise living standards can best be targeted. Our engagement and analysis have helped us prioritise four strategic result areas where our advice over the next three to five years can have the most impact:

• Skills - to achieve a substantive increase in the economic performance by enhancing New Zealand's collective skills base.
• International connections - to achieve a sustained increase in New Zealand's economic growth through our international connections.
• Natural resource management - to ensure the New Zealand economy uses its natural resources sustainably and productively.
• Long-term fiscal sustainability - to empower decision-makers to determine appropriate action to meet New Zealand's long-term fiscal challenges.

Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit

The Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit (CCMAU) is a stand-alone unit within the Treasury responsible for maintaining and enhancing the Crown's ownership interest in a range of Crown Research Institutes (CRIs), State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), Crown companies and other entities. The Executive Director of the Unit is directly accountable to the Secretary to the Treasury for the Crown's investment in CCMAU, and for CCMAU's performance.