Market Musing, Asia Pacific

After delivering an aggressive series of interest rate cuts over the past ~18-months in a bid to revive NZ’s economic fortunes, it wasn’t a surprise to see the Reserve Bank of NZ hold the Official Cash Rate steady at 2.25% today. Rather, the focus was on the RBNZ’s updated thinking about the outlook, especially as this was also new Governor Breman’s first meeting in charge. The RBNZ provided a balanced assessment of how things are unfolding with less policy ‘accommodation’ and interest rate increases now projected from Q4 2026/Q1 2027. According to the RBNZ, the “NZ economy is at an...

The “Go Big or Go Home” mentality was on display once again in NZ today after the RBNZ delivered an outsized 50bp interest rate cut as it attempts to jolt the stuttering economy back to life. The decision lowers the RBNZ’s official cash rate to 2.5%. This is ~300bps below the peak reached in 2023/24 when the world was fighting the post COVID inflation surge. As our chart shows, outside of the Global Financial Crisis, this is one of the most abrupt policy U-turns in several decades (chart 1). And in our opinion, the RBNZ may not be done yet....

After holding steady last time out the Reserve Bank of New Zealand once again spread its ‘dovish’ wings at today’s policy meeting. As expected, the RBNZ announced another 25bp cut which lowered the Official Cash Rate to 3%, however the updated assessment of the economic landscape was more downbeat and opened the door to settings being moved into ‘accommodative’ territory over future meetings (chart 1). The sluggish performance of the NZ economy remains front of mind with the RBNZ noting the “recovery stalled in the second quarter of this year”. NZ economic growth is forecast to improve but remain below...