OCR hike unlikely this week, but soon | Ryan Bridge TODAY

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]We should go now to business with our partners Forsyth Barr. Joining us this morning is Katie Bradford. Katie, good morning. Good morning. I don't quite know how to follow that interview, but let's give it a go.

[00:00:09]>> no, well, I mean, hopefully it's a lot less salacious. I think it's well, it's it's budget week. You never know. No, very good point.

[00:00:18]Right, so we uh have been speaking to Sharon Zollner this morning about OCR.

[00:00:22]Uh most economists seem to be of the view, although some say you should, that we won't move the OCR this week.

[00:00:27]>> I I I think we're not going to see a hike this week, and I think as we heard from Sharon, it's really about when we do see rates go up. Is it July? Is it a bit later? It's always about the language in a Reserve Bank decision.

[00:00:38]It's always about um how careful they need to be, what the predictions are saying, what how we're going to achieve stability, and most importantly, how they stay in that 1 to 3% inflation band. That's what people will actually be watching this week if there's any hint of where the rates are going to go, uh when they will go up. The other thing is this is a is the first time in these new disclosure rules that we'll actually get to see which way the Monetary Policy Committee members voted. Now, that is a very geeky thing, but those who are interested will be able to see if there were any dissenting voices, and who's who who they were. Yeah. Well, it's a quite important one, isn't it? Cuz we like to point the finger and pass the buck and blame. We Yeah, well, look how much flak Adrian Orr, rightly or otherwise, got for his decisions during during the during COVID and afterwards, um when we saw obviously rates fall so quickly and and not go up for some time. Now we will be able to see that. If there are people who lose, and there were people at the time saying that we should be moving faster or slower, we'll actually be able to see that now. So, I guess you can hold them to account a bit more.

[00:01:40]>> Yeah.

[00:01:41]Uh also, budget this week, of course, Katie. Uh I don't think we're going to have too many surprises. I don't think that I'm election year. I think I called it the boring election year budget. Um important, very important as we go into an election year, um but uh in terms of anything, we've seen those big announcements already, lots of money already out there, not much money for Nicola Willis to spend. She wants this to be a budget of stability. She wants to show that the National Party are the party of fiscal responsibility and that will be the trick she's trying to keep on with this budget. Totally.

[00:02:12]What else you want to talk about this morning, Katie? Well, I think it's >> going to go to sleep.

[00:02:16]>> [laughter] >> We'll see.

[00:02:18]I think it's really about and the whole show today was about the budget and O C I but I think also with the markets around in terms of those peace talks coming in. It's you It's Memorial Day in the US so we will actually have a slightly delayed reaction from the markets in terms of of how buoyed they are by what we're hearing out of America.

[00:02:37]One thing I did like today that as they're heading to Memorial Weekend Americans are spending two billion dollars more on gas this year than they were last year. So not a cheap holiday weekend.