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Finance Minister Bill English - Source: ONE News
The advertising slogan for the children's board game 'Guess Who?' goes: 'The fun is trying to guess'.
Guessing the value of our state owned assets, however - that seems just plain laughable.
But guessing we are, according to the Finance Minister. The $6 billion dollar estimate, he says "is not our best guess; it's just a guess".
The government had expectations at between $5 billion and $7 billion in last year's Budget when it confirmed it would campaign on the policy of partial asset sales.
The Greens say guesswork isn't how we should be running the country's finances, Labour reckons the figure is far higher than the valuations the Government has received.
It does seem a bit odd, considering the Government does have valuations for the companies. In fact they're listed on the Government's Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit's website.
When I add up what the likes of Macquaire, First NZ and Forsyth Barr believe the four energy companies are worth, divide by two, add in about $200 million for Air New Zealand, I get to about $6.8 billion dollars.
Perhaps the reason they're being vague is to keep the market guessing. Perhaps it's because they don't yet know whether investors will see the same value that the research houses who did the valuations saw.
Perhaps it's due to market volatility. Or perhaps it's because the Treasury hasn't been all that good at guessing what the economy will do in such uncertain times.
Whatever the reason, I'd say it's a reasonable guess that not only the value of the assets, but the rationale for selling, will continue to be contentious.
Read more of Nadine's opinion.
