RBNZ Deputy Governor Geoff Bascand said the economy is growing less than potential of 2.8%. And, there’s just not enough pressure to get inflation up. “We think capacity pressures will just become a little less,” he said. “There is pressure there, there’s just not enough pressure to get inflation up. We need growth to be around 3% or more to keep being at or approaching our targets.”
Nevertheless, he added “nobody’s talking gloom here” even though it was “getting a bit harder” to meet the inflation target. He said “the headwinds have become a bit stronger, the global economy has become a bit weaker, the domestic economy seems to have softened.” Hence, “we’re going to be drifting away a little bit, not staying as close, there’s more chance of inflation ebbing than rising”.
And, “because of that, we ended up coming to a view that we needed to help pump it up a bit more.”
