What the Treasury Does
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:
- a stable and sustainable macroeconomic environment
- improved economic performance, and
- improved State sector performance.
The Treasury also has six 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, including the NIU.
- 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), the New Zealand Export Credit Office (NZECO) and the Guarantee Scheme.
- Performance monitoring– concentrates on ownership monitoring, appointments and governance functions relating to SOEs and Crown Research Institutes (CRIs).
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.
