The Social Credit Party recognises that the key to a wider and more just distribution of wealth in society is through ownership of homes, small farms and small to medium businesses

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Social Credit will:

 

• Encourage low volume, high quality, high value production for local consumption and export.

 

• Simplify compliance costs and processes for small business.

 

• Encourage the use of local resources, to minimise transport costs and help build local communities.

 

• Establish Small Business Agencies for the promotion and marketing of small business goods and services, funded through the Community Credit  Programme.

 

• Upgrade of the Disputes Tribunal to arbitrate on small business matters, including an extension of the upper limit of financial claims.

 

• Implement an apprenticeship system that is flexible and responsive to the needs of apprentices and employers, including small businesses.

 

• Establish a Venture Capital Fund, providing small business investors with shares in approved ventures.

 

• Support current initiatives, while promoting policies that further enhance regional economic prosperity.

 

There is also growing awareness that a wide range of business opportunities lie in the field of ‘green’ research and production. However, as the Bank of International Settlements classifies Small and Medium Enterprises as the highest investment risk, commercial banks are unwilling to stimulate this area of the economy with affordable loans.

 

Using the overdraft or revolving credit tool, the New Zealand Credit Authority can make interest-free money available as investment in the real economy. Interest-free or low-interest loans are a way to establish these businesses and the new technologies they will develop, along with the more ordinary enterprises that now languish under compounding debt, or can’t get started at all through lack of access to affordable capital. Existing businesses may be ‘rescued’ through access to affordable loans that can retire interest-bearing debt.

 

Another layer of benefit to local economies will be to channel such Small and Medium Enterprises lending through locally owned banking institutions or co-operatives, rather than overseas owned commercial banks. With any profits returning to members, local economies are strengthened, stimulating an increase in trade and employment.