The Invercargill City Council’s financial and capital programme is operating a "bit below forecast", a manager says.
This week, councillors received a performance report for the latest six-month period of the annual plan during the performance, policy and partnerships committee meeting.
The document analysed the council’s position until the end of last year.
Financial services manager Patricia Christie told councillors the net operating surplus for the six months ended December 31, 2021, was $800,000 — $300,000 lower than forecast.
The capital programme was at 34% of the revised forecast.
Ms Christie believed it would improve in the next quarters, the city centre streets upgrade and the Stead St stopbank projects entering the peak delivery phases by midyear.
Finance and assurance group manager Michael Day agreed.
"We are ahead of what we were last year," he said.
"We were sitting at about $11million at this time last year. This year we are at $19million."
The last half of the year was when things "ramp up" for council financials, he said.
Cr Ludlow, who chairs the committee, said that because of the Covid-19 situation, the position the council was in was understandable.
"All things considered — bearing in mind Covid interruptions that affected revenue — the tightening of operating in the contracting market ... actually is not bad.
"[We are] down a little bit on where we were and [there is] still, I guess, no indication of what’s likely to happen in the next couple of months."
Councillors would reassess the situation and receive the next quarterly report, for the nine months ending March 31, at the April meeting of the performance, policy and partnerships committee, he said.
