Economists unanimous on rate cut

• Tweet

Four weeks out from the next monetary policy statement on September 11, economists are unanimous they expect Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard to cut rates again.

Friday, August 15th 2008, 5:43AM

by Jenny Ruth

Last month, Bollard cut the OCR from 8.25% where it had sat since July last year. It was the first time he had cut rates since July 2003.

Donna Purdue at Westpac says the market read last month's cut as "a green light that they're going to continue to cut for the rest of the year."

In part, Bollard was trying to offset the impact of rising bank funding costs as a result of the global credit crunch and the risk banks would pass those higher costs onto consumers and businesses.

Purdue says she doesn't think Bollard will be all that concerned about the recent decline in the New Zealand dollar if it remains about current levels. The trade weighted index is only about 4% lower than the Reserve Bank's forecast in June and it would probably take a 10% to 15% decline to cause Bollard to consider not cutting rates again, she says.

Robin Clements at UBS New Zealand says if the Reserve Bank doesn't cut rates in September, the currency would probably rise again. "To do nothing would defeat the purpose," he says.

Among data released since the last OCR cut, manufacturing bounced back slightly in July from a very weak June result but remained in decline, employment jumped 1.2% in the June quarter but was seen as correcting the March quarter's 1.3% decline, and the unemployment rate rose to 3.9% from 3.7%.

In addition, Treasury said it believes the economy shrank in the June quarter as well as the March quarter, putting the country in recession.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name:
Your email:	Not displayed to the public
Comment:
Comments to Good Returns go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved.

Anti-spam verification:

Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.