30 June 2016 | Author: Murray Gribben

Change in Responsibilities for Crown Irrigation Bodies

Earlier this month the Minister for Primary Industries, Nathan Guy, announced a change in how the Government’s Irrigation programmes will provide support to complex regional scale irrigation schemes from 1 July.

The responsibility for grant funding has been shifted from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to Crown Irrigation Investments Limited (CIIL). This means that there will now be end-to-end funding and support for these projects from a single entity that is solely focussed on getting irrigation schemes built as quickly and as efficiently as possible. MPI will continue to manage funding for smaller irrigation schemes and strategic water management studies.

Previously, the government’s interface and funding of schemes has been catergorised by the phase of development rather than the scale of the scheme. A key benefit of this change is that regional scale schemes will have just one point of contact throughout their life cycle - CIIL.

As an entity solely focussed on assisting commercially viable irrigation schemes get developed and built, CIIL’s goal is to help maximise a schemes chance of successfully sourcing investment capital or bank financing for construction. We believe our commercial experience and skills can assist an irrigation scheme with generating investor confidence.

Importantly, the amount of government funding available for supporting irrigation scheme development remains the same and the funding for eligible schemes will still be provided through grants.

CIIL’s focus over the coming months is to ensure a seamless transition for the current regional irrigation schemes. We will be working closely with MPI to ensure that is the case.

Furthermore, in the next month or so we will be visiting all the regional irrigation schemes that will be transitioning to CIIL to minimise any disruption and to discuss the change in detail.

At CIIL we are looking forward to entering this new phase and developing strong working relationships with schemes as we seek to generate long-term economic benefits from irrigation for New Zealand.

Murray Gribben
CEO
Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd