During 2020–21, Treasury played a lead role in the government’s response to the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 with a clear focus on economic recovery and positioning the state for sustainable growth.
Based on the tremendous efforts of its people, and in collaboration with its partner agencies, the department helped deliver 2 Budgets, a COVID-19 Fiscal and Economic Review, and an update to Queensland’s COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plan within a 10-month period. Underpinning this work was the government’s recovery plan of more than $14.2 billion of initiatives supporting Queenslanders across the state, and driving economic recovery and creating jobs.
Key achievements in 2020–21 included:
Treasury coordinated the government’s Savings and Debt Plan to drive efficiency in government services, and achieve $3 billion in savings over 4 years. Our agency has proactively supported these savings measures and total savings achieved by Treasury to date have been $15.3 million.
The Queensland economy has recovered well from COVID-19, with a range of economic indicators rebounding to higher than their pre-pandemic level. Key amongst these has been a welcome increase in employment, which rose by 2.4 per cent (or around 60,000 persons) in 2020–21. However, several sectors within the economy continue to face challenges, including services exports, business investment and tourism.
Despite these challenges, with the focus on improving Queensland’s productive capacity and competitiveness, we continue to forecast that Queensland’s economy is expected to return to strong positive growth in 2021–22 and subsequent years.
Strong partnerships with agencies and stakeholders continue to be a key to our success in achieving our vision of a strong economy for all Queenslanders. Treasury has valued the opportunity to partner with the Australian Government, and other jurisdictions, in navigating the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year.
We welcomed Investment Facilitation and Partnerships into our organisation in November 2020. Introducing an investment arm to our organisation has firmly established our role in attracting and stimulating investment in priority industries to create jobs and grow the Queensland economy. The Office of Productivity and Red Tape Reduction was established within Treasury in June 2021 to drive the government’s productivity agenda while continuing to deliver regulatory review functions across government.
I commend the excellent service shown by Treasury’s workforce during these uncertain times, and know that our commitment and professionalism place us in a strong position to continue our central role in providing expert advice and services to the government.
Leon Allen
Under Treasurer