Finance Minister Bill English is likely to hear familiar warnings about house prices during meetings in Washington and New York.

OPINION: Bill English is ambling around New York and Washington this week, chewing over the shape of the New Zealand economy with the rating agencies and kicking the tyres on the world economy at the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF.

The message he will hear from the likes of IMF boss Christine Lagarde, as she outlined it last month, is that growth has been too low for too long.

This year is set to be the fifth in a row where world growth is below the 3.7 per cent it averaged for almost 20 years before the 2008 global financial crisis.

JOSHUA ROBERTS International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde says monetary policy has done the heavy lifting.

The OECD has also expressed concern that the world is in a low-growth bind, which is bearing down on investment in productive assets, on wages and on world trade.

READ MORE:

* Budget 2016: As it happened

* Tracy Watkins: A smart Budget from Bill English, but no big fixes

* Grant Robertson: A Budget that lacks vision and courage to make life better

* Science funding boosted, while ETS subsidy to be abolished

* Budget 2016 by the numbers

* Vernon Small: A tasty chocolate box of a Budget

* BusinessNZ: The Budget and confidence

So how will New Zealand stack up?

On the growth side English may let his smugometer swing a little higher.

While this country would not expect to match, or better, average global growth (given the impact of fast-growing economies like China), he has a reasonable story to tell.

Growth in the June quarter was up 3.6 per cent from a year ago; three times the rate of the United States and ahead of Australia's 3.3 per cent.

The ANZ's reading on confidence and domestic trading activity points to growth "accelerating towards 4.5 per cent", although the bank doubts that rate is achievable given the skilled labour shortage. But it concluded the growth cycle "hasn't yet peaked".

If English takes the time to play with the OECD's online ready reckoner – which allows you to put your own economy into context – he will find other reasons to smile.

New Zealand's growth is above average, unemployment is lower and his own Budget balance puts him well up the league table, albeit only bumping along in slightly positive territory. (We will know more on that score when the Budget outcome for the year to June is released later this month.)

The balance of payments is not so hot, even though it is low by recent New Zealand standards, and export volume growth is not flash.

But investment levels are relatively OK, household consumption growth spiked to almost 2 per cent in June, and import volume growth is strong.

However, it is high immigration that is contributing most to overall growth rates.

Real per capital growth was only 0.7 per cent over the past year amid concerns about fairness and childhood deprivation levels made worse by the increased burden on poorer households of accommodation costs.

And, as with the rest of the developed world, inflation is moribund.

But English is likely to hear plenty about the fallout from persistently low inflation that will resonate back home.

The OECD is worried that exceptionally low – even negative – interest rates are distorting markets and building up risks through bloated house prices and buoyant sharemarkets even as growth slackens.

With our central bank rate heading under 2 per cent, we still have more room to move than most.

But the emerging consensus is that the world needs to wean itself off a reliance on lower and lower interest rates and looser and looser monetary policy.

Instead, the word among the world's financial tsars is of "collective fiscal stimulus" from those governments that can afford it. Put simply, finance ministers like English should where possible borrow and spend more to give the global economy (and inflation) a shot in the arm.

The IMF's Lagarde, speaking in Canada last month, was singing from the same balance sheet.

"When it comes to support for demand, central banks have done the heavy lifting in recent years. Now fiscal policy needs to play a bigger role in countries that have additional spending headroom."

And spend on what?

Lagarde again: "Canada is, in fact, leading the way by stepping up its infrastructure investment and by increasing transfers to families with children."

So it's the familiar story; and the one that our own Reserve Bank referred to last year when it called for some fiscal policy "mates" to help monetary policy.

In short it's a tale of more spending on infrastructure, research and building skill levels at a time when interest rates are so low and government's can borrow at a pittance.

It will be a hard choir for English and his colleagues to join.

They have made much of their spending restraint, since taking office, and a return to (narrow) surpluses became a touchstone of their economic management.

While the fiscal straitjacket has been slightly loosened this year, and surplus "point targets" have been shelved, the Government is still wedded to its target of reducing net debt to about 20 per cent of GDP in 2020.

The OECD may believe that "provided fiscal measures raise potential output, a temporary debt-financed expansion need not increase debt ratios in the longer term".

But there is no sign Cabinet is about to change its approach, even as the likes of the IMF and the OECD start crafting a new orthodoxy based on more spending and far less restraint.