Super Fund contributions must restart on surplus

National must restart contributions to the Super Fund when it gets the books back into surplus as the government books would be $2.2 billion better off if contributions had not been stopped, says Labour’s Finance spokesperson David Parker.

“New figures show that the Super Fund – one of the great successes of the last Labour Government – continues to go from strength to strength.

“But it could have been much better. The Guardians of the New Zealand Super Fund say that as of 30 June 2013 the NZ Super Fund was $10.8 billion smaller than it would have been if contributions had continued, with $2.2 billion of foregone investment gains.

“The fund returned $4.51 billion in the past twelve months at a rate of over 21 per cent. That is half a billion more than the National Government raised from its failed asset sales programme.  

“Given those figures it is astonishing that National still refuses to resume contributions to the Fund until around 2020.

“That’s six years away. By then National would have suspended contributions for 12 years while trying to maintain the pretence they are pre-funding superannuation.

“We will have foregone billions of dollars in returns by then. New Zealand can’t afford to lose that sort of money with the ballooning cost of New Zealand Superannuation forecast to exceed the cost of education in just three years’ time.

“Labour will restart contributions to the Super Fund when the books are back in the black, ramping them up over time,” says David Parker.

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