The spend has fallen to 4.5 percent of the total wage bill of 38 core agencies. Photo: Unsplash
New figures show core public service agencies spent $420 million on consultants and contractors in a nine-month period to March.
The spend has fallen to just 4.5 percent of the total wage bill of 38 core agencies.
The Public Service Commission says this is the lowest since measurement began seven years ago.
The Education Ministry was far and away the biggest spender for the nine months, shelling out $146m.
The spending by the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment has plummeted from high levels several years ago, to just $24m; the Ministry of Social Development has dropped a lot, too, to $31m, though these two major ministries were still among the biggest spenders in the period to March 2025.
Only the core agencies are counted for this, leaving out the likes of big spenders such as Defence and Police.
Once those two, and all Crown entities and non-core departments are counted in, the total spend for the nine months was $1.22 billion, split half and half between capital and operating spending.
Photo: Supplied / Public Service Commission
Often, capital spending on contractors is tied up with IT upgrades, while operating spending is on recruitment firms to hire temp workers to plug holes.
National pledged in the election to cut $400m a year in operational - not capital - spending on contractors by the end of the 2024-25 financial year - end of June - compared to 2022-23.
Halfway there, at the end of 2023-24, it had dropped $274m.
In the year to June 2024, the total spend was almost $1b and two years ago it was $1.2b.
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