The Ministry of Social Development had one of the biggest decreases in spending on contractors and consultants in the public sector. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
The public sector's spending on contractors and consultants has plummeted by more than $200 million, or a third.
The government's stated goal is to claw back $400m a year on this spending.
Figures released by the Public Service Commission on Thursday show it falling to $700m for the nine months to March.
The equivalent nine-month spend last year was about $950m, and it hit over $1.2 billion for the full 12 months to mid-2023.
Public Service Minister Nicola Willis said it was down 34 percent on an annualised basis.
The drop takes the share of workforce spend on this in the core public service down to 8.5 percent, the lowest level since the measure was introduced in 2018.
It had climbed to over 14 percent three years ago.
Public Service Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
"I am anticipating a further decrease in the annual spend by the end of this financial year," Willis said in a statement on Thursday.
"The government's expectation is for this decrease to continue."
Some of the decreases at the biggest spenders on contractors and consultants are Social Development (MSD) at $76m for the nine months ($99m for a comparative period last year); Internal Affairs $59m ($91m); and MBIE $55m ($77m).
The split was between operating spending across all 37 core departments and agencies of $450m for the nine months, with $250m of capital spending.
The outlay does not count what the non-core public sector spends this way, and the non-core includes some of the very biggest spenders on contractors such as police, the Transport Agency Waka Kotahi, and Health NZ Te Whatu Ora.
The non-core is not bound to the same extent by government directives to cut this spending - which governments have been instructing since 2018, but usually to no avail.