March 8 Edition Of The BNZ Weekly Overview

March 8 Edition Of The BNZ Weekly Overview

We are running our monthly BNZ Confidence Survey this week so if time permits please click on the URL below and let us know whether you feel the economy will get better or worse over the coming year. More importantly let us know how things are currently looking in your particular industry as that is where the real value of the report we release on the survey each month comes from.

http://www.closer.co.nz/bnzeconomist.asp

This morning the Reserve Bank did as the markets were expecting and raised the official cash rate 0.25% to 7.5%. But they watered down their warning of further rate rises and that means fixed wholesale borrowing costs have rallied today! In the absence of scary words from the RB we see increasing scope for NZ interest rates to remain high over an extended period, with the obvious implication that the NZD is going to remain well supported for potentially many quarters.

The NZD has however fallen over the past week to near US 68 cents this evening from 70 cents last Thursday with a surge in risk aversion following the Shanghai sharemarket fall causing the closing out of many long NZD/short Yen positions.

SEE FULL REPORT IN PDF FORMAT:
http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/0703/WOmch8.pdf

ENDS

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