WELLINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) – New Zealand’s top central banker on Wednesday said that measures of core inflation in the first quarter had remained stable within its target band of 1% to 3%, adding that it remained focused on balancing inflation control while supporting an economic recovery.
• “We remain ready to act decisively and in a timely manner if there are signs that short-term inflation is feeding into more persistent pressures, to ensure inflation settles sustainably at 2% over the medium term,” Reserve Bank of New Zealand Governor Anna Breman said in a speech.
• Breman said the monetary policy committee continues to keep a “close watch” on what is happening in the Middle East and incoming data to assess what that means for the New Zealand inflation outlook.
• New Zealand’s central bank held the official cash rate at 2.25% at its last monetary policy meeting in April but noted it was balancing the potential benefits of responding pre-emptively to the risk of higher medium-term inflation against the cost of unnecessarily stifling the economy. Since then, New Zealand’s first-quarter inflation has come in at 3.1%, slightly higher than the RBNZ’s expectation and outside the central bank’s target band.
(Reporting by Lucy Craymer in Wellington and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Thomas Derpinghaus)
