Farm supplies business PGG Wrightson will pay shareholders $9 million in dividends less than a year after receiving a $4.1m taxpayer-funded handout via the Covid-19 wage subsidy scheme. The Covid-19 wage subsidy scheme was set up by the Government last year to help keep people in jobs in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Many companies who claimed the wage subsidy later repaid it after realising they fared better than expected in the crisis. A PGG Wrightson spokesman said it had no plans to repay the wage subsidy. During that time PGG Wrightson paid all employees in full whether they were able to work or not, he said.

Source: Stuff February 22, 2021 20:50 UTC