On 17 August, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will announce monetary policy and will release its updated economic and policy rate forecasts. May’s projections suggest that we should see another 50bp hike (bringing the OCR to 3.0%) in August, and this is both our base-case scenario and what markets/consensus are expecting. CPI figures for 2Q – released shortly after the latest RBNZ 50bp hike in July – showed another above-consensus acceleration in headline inflation (from 6.9% to 7.3%), and we also witnessed an unexpected jump in wage growth in the same quarter (2.3% quarter-on-quarter). Since the RBNZ narrative has ... (full story)