Latest / Best of Business / David Seymour: Associate Finance Minister on a reform to the Overseas Investment Act

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David Seymour: Associate Finance Minister on a reform to the Overseas Investment Act · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk zed B.
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  Speaker 2: So the government going to be more welcoming to foreign
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  Speaker 2: investment by amending the Overseas Investment Act. Unless it's residential,
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  Speaker 2: farmland or fish quota, we will one look to say
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  Speaker 2: yes to do it within fifteen days. The Associate Finance
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  Speaker 2: Minister David Seymore's with us, good morning, Good Well, anyway,
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  Speaker 2: how come this has taken so long?
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  Speaker 3: Well, we've gone through a process of basically speeding up
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  Speaker 3: everything we can within the current law. So when I
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  Speaker 3: got this job started last year, I issued a new
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  Speaker 3: letter to the OO saying, look, you've got to do
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  Speaker 3: it in half your seventy day timeframe. They're now doing
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  Speaker 3: that ninety six percent of the time. Meanwhile, we've been
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  Speaker 3: going through Cabinet getting everyone signed up and agreed on
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  Speaker 3: changes to the law itself. That's now agreed and we're
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  Speaker 3: going to put it through Parliament this year. So that's
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  Speaker 3: a two year process over all. So over all the
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  Speaker 3: way that we do overseas investment, I know it would
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  Speaker 3: be great if we could be like Malay or maybe
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  Speaker 3: Trump and just announce it and make it so, but
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  Speaker 3: there's the reality of a coalition government and a parliamentary democracy.
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  Speaker 2: How much money actually comes in that's not residential or
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  Speaker 2: farm or fishing.
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  Speaker 3: It's in the billions, for sure. It goes through businesses
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  Speaker 3: rather than necessarily land fishing quota as a relatively minor thing.
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  Speaker 3: There's only so much of it. But what's important is
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  Speaker 3: that relative to other countries, we're twenty six out of
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  Speaker 3: thirty four are WECD countries monitored, and that sounds okay,
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  Speaker 3: we're still eight people worse. It is probably not because
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  Speaker 3: the US, for example. Well, I mean, you know, it
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  Speaker 3: could be worse. But one thing you've got to recognize
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  Speaker 3: is that if the US you've got a huge internal market.
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  Speaker 3: You know, even Australia has a lot more capital inside
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  Speaker 3: its borders. So we can't afford to be in the
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  Speaker 3: bottom half. We've got to be in the top ten.
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  Speaker 2: Couldn't agree more? Could it be?
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  Speaker 3: Though?
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  Speaker 2: Like tourism, Yes we're open, but people decide not to
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  Speaker 2: come and we know where near where we should be.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I totally agree. There's a bunch of other things
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  Speaker 3: we've got to do. So for example, when it can
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  Speaker 3: take twenty eight years to get rim a consent for
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  Speaker 3: one supermarket. That's going to be a big barrier to say,
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  Speaker 3: getting another supermarket competitor in and getting prices down. But
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  Speaker 3: the government is also replacing the Resource Management Act with
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  Speaker 3: a law based on property rights. We're also fixing up
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  Speaker 3: for a lot of work around labor laws to make
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  Speaker 3: it easier to actually employ people. So the government is
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  Speaker 3: doing across the board a bunch of stuff that will
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  Speaker 3: make it easier to do business in this country. The
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  Speaker 3: part that I'm responsible for, at least we're talking about today,
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  Speaker 3: is the regulations about getting foreign investment in and basically
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  Speaker 3: we're going to say, look, as long as there's no farmland,
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  Speaker 3: fishing quota or residential housing, then it's an infrastructure or
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  Speaker 3: business or whatever, then we're going to do it within
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  Speaker 3: fifteen days.
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  Speaker 2: Fantastic good to talk to you appreciate it very much.
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  Speaker 3: David.
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  Speaker 2: See more Thesessociate Finance Ministry.
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