Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on the Reserve Bank's OCR statement

The Reserve Bank delivered their quarterly update on the OCR - but there was a hawkish undertone this time round, according to experts.

The central bank cut the Official Cash Rate by 25 basis points to 3.25 percent, in line with expectations from economists.

Despite this,  NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny noted there were some concerns about the economic future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now Jane Tibcherini is The Herald's Wellington Business editor and
with us. Now, how your name, hey Heaver? OCR uncertainty
still the case, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Very much? So? The picture that I have in my
mind is of some sort of frantic office worker trying
to explain things by referring to a pin board, sort
of drawing strings between pieces of paper, sort of saying,
you know, if this happens, this could happen, and that
could happen, but maybe not. And here's another scenario that

(00:30):
was kind of my read through the Reserve Bank's quarterly
Monetary Policy statement and its commentary today in the press conference.
So it cut the OCR by twenty five basis points,
as expected, but then it really highlighted the uncertainty and
the global outlook, largely down to Donald Trump. I think
it referred to the word uncertain one hundred and sixty

(00:52):
four times and it's sixty two page document. News.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's a lot, isn't it. What's going on with the cuts?
Because we all assume that there was just going to
be a rate. It cuts at a rate of knots,
but it doesn't look very much like that at all.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Now, yeah, look it's very much open for interpretation. You
could argue that Christian hawk speed delivered a hawkish statement,
and that is because the Monetary Policy Committee was divided
for only the second time ever on what to do
with the OCR. One person thought it should stay at

(01:24):
three point five percent, the others thought it should be cut. Yeah,
so you know, so there's that factor. Also, the commentary
today in the press conference really suggested it there was
a bit of uncertainty. I think Christian said that, you know,
there was no clear bias, So basically, at the next
meeting he couldn't say, you know, which way he was

(01:46):
leaning in terms of what the committee would do with
the OCR. But then the thing that was a bit
puzzling was the projections in the statement suggested that the
OCR would still be cut another couple of times. So
you know, you're piecing together bits of information that tells
slightly different stories. So the only real story that this

(02:09):
all tells is that we don't know. I know.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Well, if they don't know, then I think we can
say it's okay that we don't know, because they are
the ones who are supposed to know. Hey, thank you,
and I appreciated to Native Charny, The Herald's Wellington business edited.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
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