COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF) funding decisions

The COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF) was established in April 2020, following a $12.1 billion package announced on 17 March 2020 that provided an initial response to the immediate impacts of the first COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown. The CRRF was closed as at Budget 2022. The final size of the CRRF was $61.6 billion.

This data release provides a comprehensive list of decisions taken to allocate funding from this $73.7 billion up to 19 May 2022.

This data release includes information on the amount managed against the CRRF (in the Fiscal Impact column) and the amount appropriated for each initiative. The data reflects the original funding decision which may differ from the current and/or final appropriation impacts of these initiatives.

For each initiative, the fiscal impact (as estimated at the time the decision is made) on net core Crown debt for the forecast period is counted as a decrease in the amount remaining in the CRRF.

The amount appropriated (and the amount of expenditure incurred) may differ from the amount counted against the CRRF.

The amount appropriated represents the authority to incur expenditure (either operating or capital) rather than the net expected fiscal cost on net core Crown debt. For more information on the public finance system and appropriations, please see A Guide to the Public Finance Act.

Some of the initiatives provided tax relief to taxpayers, which results in a reduction in tax revenue rather than an increase in expenditure to the Crown, therefore no appropriation is necessary. Initiatives such as taxable benefits will have appropriation changes different to what was managed against the CRRF, because a portion of the benefit is expected to be returned to the Crown as tax. Therefore, the overall fiscal cost of the initiative can be different to the total amount allocated for expenditure.

Some funding decisions established tagged contingencies. A tagged contingency is a ring-fenced fund (operating and/or capital) set aside for a short period of time in advance of appropriation. For funding to be appropriated, and therefore able to be spent, certain conditions normally need to be met (such as further information being provided to Ministers). These conditions are set by Cabinet when the tagged contingency is established. Once conditions are met, approval to spend is made by either Cabinet or two (or more) Ministers. At this point, funding may be appropriated.

Initiatives with funding that has been added back to the amount of CRRF funding available to be allocated have also been included in this data release. They will have a negative number in the Fiscal Impact column.

This data release only includes information of the original decision that sought funding from the CRRF. Subsequent decisions that reallocated these funds have not been included unless further funding is sought from CRRF, or the funding has been returned to the CRRF.

For more information on how the CRRF funding decisions are recorded and reported, please see COVID-19 funding allocation and expenditure.

Details of where Performance Information in respect of these appropriations will be or has been reported can be found in the relevant Estimates documents.

The data contained in this release comes from a manually compiled data set.