New Zealand government to set up $112 million social investment fund

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -The New Zealand government said on Thursday it would set up a new NZ$190 million ($112 million) social investment fund in its 2025 budget to make targeted investments designed to help improve the lives of its vulnerable people.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the fund will invest in 20 initiatives over the next year, with a tracking system built into the programmes to check its impacts.

“The fund is about more than new money. It’s about government investing earlier, smarter and with much more transparent measurement of the impact interventions are having for the people they are designed to help,” Willis said in a speech, ahead of the government budget on May 22.

Willis said the fund’s investment plans will be guided by data and evidence as the government seeks to identify which vulnerable groups could put more pressure on government’s finances and the federal budget in the future.

Willis this month had said baseline spending in the budget would be reduced to NZ$1.3 billion from its prior estimate of NZ$2.4 billion that could help Treasury to forecast an operating surplus, excluding the financial position of the government-owned accident health provider.

The government invests around NZ$7 billion ($4.13 billion) each year buying social services from non-government agencies.

“Over the next two to three years, I expect to see significant amounts of funding transferred from current social services to the Social Investment Fund as communities and providers develop new approaches to working with government,” Willis said.

($1 = 1.6958 New Zealand dollars)

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Aurora Ellis)