Profiteering, price gouging and do-nothing Government policies are the cause of the Reserve Bank lifting the official cash rate this morning, according to the New Zealand First Leader, Rt Hon Winston Peters.

The Reserve Bank has just announced it will increase the official cash rate by half-a-percent to five-percent.

Mr Peters said that the Government should have regulated against :

 Telecom’s price gouging – which returned shareholders a massive 42 per cent last year;

 Petrol price gouging by oil companies – which cost motorists an extra 3 cents a litre this week;

 Overseas owned banks making huge profits (22 per cent) through exorbitant charges ;

 Retail power pricing which pushed up electricity charges in the midst of winter.

Mr Peters said if these regulations had been imposed there would have been no need for the Reserve Bank to increase cash rates.

“This is also why the Reserve Bank Act needs to be changed to stop it being obsessed with inflation, and to start it being employment and export friendly.

“We cannot have the Governor continually choking the economy which is already on its knees with huge balance of payments problems,” he said.

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