The Chinese have billions of dollars to spend, and they want to buy our assets.
It sounds like the start of a chilling NZ First election ad. But it also appears to be true.
We need to exercise some caution about foreign investment, but we should welcome it if we can be satisfied that it will help to grow our economy.
Checkpoint had an interview with Beijing-based investment banker David Mahon, where he opined that we should be letting the Chinese buy shares in our state assets. I am not convinced by the need to sell state assets at all, but it would seem the height of madness to allow even more of our critical infrastructure assets to be owned by offshore interests.
If the Chinese want to spend money here to help grow new businesses, or to breathe life into floundering and cash-starved Kiwi ventures, then we should encourage them.
But if their investment strategy is to buy up shares in existing profitable businesses and export the profits offshore, we'd have to ask what's in it for us.
Friday, May 27, 2011
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6 Billion?
ReplyDeleteMakes Warner Bros look like paupers! Wonder which laws Key will offer to scrap for them.
In it for *us*? Don't be so socialist. So long as someone, somewhere is getting rich, it's in the best interests of the country.
ReplyDeleteWhat astonishes me is how the fact that the dividends paid to any foreign investor counts against our invisible trade balance is ignored by all those who promote this type of "investment". Key and English would apparently swap assets for a quick fix and a recurring and almost certainly in the case of the Chinese permanent liability. You only have to look at the sale of Telecom for a text book example as how that works. SOld for $4.25 billion - dividends paid overseas to date $14 billion. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10722384
ReplyDeleteYet Roger Kerr and the other right wing economists pimping for this type of investment just ignore that issue.
I honestly thought English was smarter than that. But if he is a typical product of Treasury thinking then we are really f**ked.
There's not much left of NZ anyway, soon we'll be the sweatshop for Chinese consumers and then I'll be off to Australia too!
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