The New Zealand government has raised the provision for cost of default under the retail guarantee scheme by another NZ$32 million in March to NZ$881 million. This is on top of a NZ$78 million increase in provision made in the February statement.The increase in provision reflects the fragile position of some of the guaranteed finance companies, with many of them struggling to refinance their maturing debt. This is made worse by the fact that some of these are not even meeting the minimum credit rating requirement to get the guarantee extension.Of the 29 finance companies with a credit rating, only four of them have so far received guarantee extension. The NZ government does not provide details of how many applications are in the pipeline.As of March 31, the government had guaranteed deposits of 73 financial institutions totalling NZ$133 billion, unchanged from the month before.