New Zealand is not on track to lift its average living standards relative to Australia or the OECD average. The BPS is based on a projected annual average rate of growth in real GDP of only 2.8 percent during the five years to March 2010. This is far below the annual average rate achieved in the last decade and well below the 4 percent per annum rate of growth that the minister of finance has said would be the test of whether the government's growth strategy was working.