Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook

2022

Date: 20 April 2022
ISSN: 2653‑164X
Author: The Treasury and the Department of Finance

The Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998  (the Charter) provides for the Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of the Department of Finance (the Secretaries) to release publicly a Pre‑election Economic and Fiscal Outlook report (PEFO) within 10 days of the issue of the writs for a general election. Such writs were issued on 11 April 2022.

The purpose of the PEFO is to provide updated information on the economic and fiscal outlook. The information in the report takes into account, to the fullest extent possible, all Government decisions and all other circumstances that may have a material effect on the economic and fiscal outlook that were in existence before the issue of the writs for the election. The PEFO does not include the impact of election commitments that do not constitute decisions of Government and that are costed separately during the election campaign.

The Charter provides that, where there is information unchanged from that set out in full in an earlier budget report, the PEFO may summarise and state this information is unchanged. 

Consistent with the requirements of the Charter, the PEFO includes:

• fiscal estimates and projections for the current financial year (2021-22) and the following 4 financial years (2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26);
• economic and other assumptions for the current financial year and the following 4 financial years used in preparing these updated fiscal estimates;
• discussion of the sensitivity of updated fiscal estimates to changes in those economic and other assumptions;
• debt aggregates and similar information presented in the debt statement;
• an updated set of financial statements and summary of the external reporting standards used in the preparation of the PEFO (Appendix A);
• a list of policy decisions taken by the Government since the 2022-23 Budget and decisions that were taken but not yet announced at that time (Appendix B); and
• an updated statement of the risks that may have a material effect on the fiscal outlook (Appendix C).