At 5pm New York time (2100GMT) the Reserve Bank of New Zealand announce their decision … to hike or not to hike, that is the question.
The official cash rate is currently at 3% after two rate hikes at the previous two meetings. The market is expecting a 25 basis point hike, with OIS pricing last at 95%.
I did a preview here. Adam also, his is here.
5 minutes after the announcement (2105GMT) Graeme Wheeler (governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand) will face the slings and arrows of the press, as he fronts a news conference. Wheeler is never shy of the opportunity to talk down the kiwi $, so watch out for that.
An hour later, at 2205GMT, Wheeler appears before parliament.
In addition to all this, the bank publishes its quarterly Monetary Policy Statement (MPS). Each MPS must address:
- how the Reserve Bank proposes to achieve its targets;
- how it proposes to formulate and implement monetary policy during the next five years; and
- how monetary policy has been implemented since the last Monetary Policy Statement.
So we’ll get a good idea of how Wheeler and the bank sees policy options evolving from here. Here is the previous statement from March (PDF) and Wheeler’s comments then.
