Govt eyeing ‘best ways’ to use money Act

By MARK HAIHUIE
TREASURY Secretary Dairi Vele says the Government does not plan to instantly pull out large amounts of money from commercial banks when implementing the Public Money Management Regularisation Act.
He said commercial banks holding the accounts of State agencies were being consulted on how best to carry out the process without affecting their operations and, indirectly, the new legislation allows the Government to collect 90 per cent of revenues generated by the State agencies and keep in their bank accounts.
“It is in process now. This is money held in the commercial banks such as ANZ, BSP Westpac. The thing is that they get that money and lend it back to the Government,” Vele said.
“The first part is to quantify how much money is actually out there that’s free cash and then we will have to work out the best way to access that money without bringing adverse consequences to the financial market. We don’t want to pull out so much money out of BSP or Westpac that they can’t lend money to people to start a business or buy a house.
“So we have to be very clever in how we go about doing this.”
Vele said they would consider “worthwhile programmes” which State agencies could fund themselves with outside their operations.