WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s central bank decided not to raise interest rates last week because of communication challenges, not economic risks, assistant governor Christian Hawkesby said.
It would have been difficult to explain an increase in the official cash rate on the same day the country entered a lockdown to combat a Covid-19 outbreak, Hawkesby told Bloomberg in a telephone interview in Wellington. He also said policy makers considered raising the official cash rate (OCR) by as much as half a percentage point.
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