NZ: Food Price index - October 2001

Data Flash (New Zealand)
NZ: Food Price index - October 2001

Key points

The last piece of domestic data prior to tomorrow's RBNZ MPS and OCR review revealed a 0.2% mom rise in the food price index in October (the market expectation was for a flat outcome).

The annual rate of food price inflation declined from 7.8% in September to 7.7% in October.

Fruit and vegetable prices fell 2.0% mom. However, this was offset by a further 0.8% mom rise in meat prices and a 0.5% mom rise in general grocery prices.

Comment

Our preliminary forecast for the Q4 CPI is +0.5% qoq (the RBNZ forecast 0.6% qoq in its August MPS). This result would see the annual rate decline from 2.4% to 1.7%.

We continue to expect a 50bps decline in the RBNZ's OCR at tomorrow's OCR review (70% probability; market pricing 90% probability), taking the OCR to 4.75%. Given that the global situation remains fluid, we expect the RBNZ will refrain from making strong statements about the expected outlook for policy settings in the accompanying MPS.

Darren Gibbs, Senior Economist

This, along with an extensive range of other publications, is available on our web site http://research.gm.db.com

Please do not respond to this mailbox. If you need to update your contact information or request new research, contact your Deutsche Bank Sales Contact.

© Scoop Media