In fact, corporate balance sheets in New Zealand have generally remained healthy after the stresses of the late 1980s and early 1990s. BIS Review 8/1998  -3-  But much of the demand for borrowed funds in recent years has come from the household sector, and has been secured by that favourite New Zealand financial instrument, the house mortgage.
This borrowing has taken the ratio of household debt to household disposable income from a relatively low 42 per cent as recently as mid-1990 to almost 90 per cent currently (Graph 1) - from a level which was relatively low by international standards to around the levels of indebtedness seen in places like the United States.