Media Release

6 March 2008

No Mercy Shown From Reserve Bank

The Reserve Bank’s announcement today that the official cash rate remains unchanged at 8.25 per cent is scant comfort for New Zealand’s home-owners and exporters, says New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters.

“Our exporters are competing out in the international market bereft of much of the support and lower interest rates that many of their competitors enjoy. And here at home the whole economy is blocked by the constipated attitude toward monetary policy.

“Low wages, high interest rates, and sluggish export performances are not going to fix themselves while they are constrained by the narrow focus of the Reserve Bank Act. High interest rates here have done nothing except make foreign investment opportunists richer and damage New Zealand’s export-based economy.

“One wonders why we have a monetary policy that favours foreign interests over our own,” said Mr Peters.

ENDS

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