New Zealand’s economy contracted 12.2 percent in this year’s second quarter, the largest fall since 1987, the year the country began monitoring the number, and the country’s first quarter of negative growth since March 2010.
Household spending dropped 12 percent; construction and manufacturing were off 25.8 and 13 percent, respectively, from the previous year. The travel sector was hit hardest, after the government banned tourists from entering the country.
The shrinkage was less than the 16-percent contraction the government had expected, according to finance minister Grant Robertson.
The country spent part of the quarter in one of the strictest lockdowns of any nation, with people confined to their homes for 30 days unless buying food or medicine or taking an hour of outdoor exercise in their neighborhoods.
The opposition National Party predicted that, as a result of the government’s policy, the country would enter “the deepest recession in living memory” and the quarter’s economic contraction did damage that “will last for decades to come.”
TRENDPOST: While epidemiologists, who don’t have a clue on how the lockdowns they called for would destroy businesses and lives, praise the New Zealand government’s “go hard, go early” approach which they attribute to the nation suffering only 25 virus deaths.
And, as we have been reporting, with COVID death rates dropping, the media keeps pumping COVID “cases” to keep the Fear Game going, and power-hungry politicians never let a good crisis go to waste.
In late August, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern imposed a stay-at-home order on its largest city, Auckland, because cases were rising.
To date, the nation of 5 million people has recorded the grand total of 25 deaths since the COVID War began in March or 0.0005 percent of its population. Yet, despite this tiny death toll, as with other nations, the majority of the population buys what it is sold and marches off to orders.
