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Fee hikes to speed applications for foreigners buying New Zealand assets: government

Xinhua, June 30, 2016 Adjust font size:

Foreign investors wanting to buy New Zealand assets will face a steep rise in regulatory charges, but faster processing times from next week, the government announced Thursday.

The government had approved changes that would see the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) fees restructured and increased by between 8.7 percent and 166 percent for different application fee types, Land Information Minister Louise Upston said in a statement.

Recent internal changes in the OIO had driven operational improvements and the government wanted to see further improvement, including fewer delays on the notoriously long process of processing overseas applications to buy New Zealand assets.

"Increased fees will enable the OIO to take on more staff, so reduce the time it takes to assess overseas investors' applications, ensuring more responsive monitoring and enforcement practices," said Upston.

Another package of measures would provide targeted exemptions to the investment screening regime from December.

"The overall effect of these changes will be to ensure that New Zealand's economic interests are adequately safeguarded while the compliance costs associated with overseas investment applications are reduced," said Upston.

"The OIO's job is to ensure that overseas investors seeking to invest in our sensitive assets meet a number of stringent criteria. Fee increases will help the OIO do that job better."

The OIO has been mired in controversy over allegations of "rubber-stamping" approval applications without adequate assessments and failing to carry out good character tests on foreign buyers.

Last month, Upston launched an investigation into how the OIO carried out the good character test, one of its considerations in deciding whether to give consent for a land purchase by overseas buyers.

This followed revelations concerning the sale of a 1,317-hectare station in the central North Island's Taranaki region to Panama-registered firm Ceol & Muir in 2014.

Documents obtained by the opposition Labour Party showed the brothers who owned Ceol & Muir, Rafael and Federico Grozovsky citizens of Italy and Argentina respectively had been found criminally responsible for chemical dumping from their Buenos Aires tannery. Endit