Cuddling cows
OPINION: Years of floods and low food prices have driven a dairy farm in England's northeast to stop milking its cows and instead charge visitors to cuddle them.
The founding director of NZ Agri Brokers, Andrew Laming, reckons the banking structure massively favours lending to housing, at the expense of the productive sectors, particularly agribusiness.
Between 2018-2024, lending to housing grew 45.54% while lending to agri grew 3.44%.
He says, put plainly, over the last 6 years, the main banks collectively advanced an extra $11 billion to housing and just $2 billion to agri.
"These structural issues also make lending to agri (& business) more expensive (the margins are almost double in agri on average and in some cases can be higher), even though agri lending losses are actually very low. This is a massive fiscal drag on the NZ productive sectors."
A shake-up of the banking sector's priorities is long overdue!
