Guide to New Zealand Budgeting Practices

Fixed nominal baselines

One of the most important features of New Zealand's Fiscal Management Approach (FMA) is fixed nominal baselines. Fixed nominal baselines mean that the amount of funding an agency receives each year (the baseline) does not automatically increase to adjust for inflation. Instead, agencies are generally often expected to absorb price increases; in effect this acts as an annual efficiency dividend on Government expenditure.

A small number of specific forecast items are excluded from this approach, such as legislative entitlements where it would not make sense to ask an agency to absorb an increase in demand for a benefit or subsidy that there is a legal obligation to provide.[1] In these cases, the increase in the cost of the policy is forecast and built into the profile of the appropriation. Examples of this include welfare benefits, which are adjusted for inflation, superannuation which is indexed to the average weekly wage, and some education spending which is adjusted for demographic changes.

For the majority of expenditure, however, appropriations are ‘fixed’ and a specific policy decision is required to make adjustments. Funding increases are sought through the Budget process, where increases have to be met from a limited pool of funding allocated for new spending and traded off against spending proposals in all other areas of government. These pools of new funding are called the allowances. Allowances are set during the strategic phase of the Budget process and are set at a level which allows the government to achieve their broader fiscal objectives.

This approach means that the government applies a high level of scrutiny to new spending. In order to receive funding for cost pressures,[2] the burden of proof rests on agencies to demonstrate that they will not be able to deliver services effectively within existing funding levels. The government must then trade off increasing spending on existing programmes against any new policies.