Limit on foreign investors $10M?

Press, 19 July 1989, Page 8

Limit on foreign investors $10M?

PA Wellington Foreign investment of up to $lO million without reference to the Overseas Investment Commission could soon be allowed, said the Minister of Finance, Mr Caygill, yesterday. The Government was also still considering whether to free up the foreign ownership of farmland, he told the Federated Farmers annual conference in Wellington. Mr Caygill said there was an exemption for all foreign investment under $2 million. “The Government is reviewing that threshold with a view to aligning it with Australia’s threshold of $lO million in all sectors except the sensitive ones of broadcasting, > commercial fishing and rural land," Mr Caygill said. The former Minister of Finance, Mr Roger Douglas, had announced in 1985 that foreign farmownership rules under the Land Settlement Act would be repealed? Those rules usually insisted that foreign buyers become resident in New Zealand. Mr Douglas had intended to put all foreign farm ownership applications through the Overseas Investment Commission, which has more liberal criteria, Mr Caygill said. “The Government's statement has not been repudiated but we are in no hurry. , “The reason for the considerable delay is simply that other things have been more important” If farm ownership were subject to the commission’s consent the commission’s act would have to be amended to apply different rules for farmland. “If we were to weaken provisions of the Land Settlement Act we would need to put in place a new regime,” Mr Caygill said. The reasons for restricting the foreign ownership of farmland were not economic but social.