began dropping floating rates<\/a> on Wednesday after the Reserve Bank cut the OCR by 25 basis points, as expected, to 2.25 percent, the lowest since June 2022.<\/p>\nSpeaking in Auckland on Thursday, Willis said the Reserve Bank would monitor how banks responded to the OCR cut, but she hoped it would flow through to mortgage-holders.<\/p>\n
“My message to the New Zealand banks is a very clear one: pass on as much as possible,” she said.<\/p>\n
“When you do, that makes a significant difference to our economy. And actually, as some of New Zealand’s biggest businesses, you have a stake in this economy. So pass those rates on.”<\/p>\n
In its forecasts released on Wednesday, the central bank said the risks for inflation were “balanced”.<\/p>\n
Willis told reporters she expected the economy to pick up and inflation to come down even more next year, meaning a real difference to the cost-of-living.<\/p>\n
“Conditions are going to get easier for a lot of New Zealand workers and families,” she said.<\/p>\n
“All of the data and indicators I’m seeing tell me that next year will be a lot better.”<\/p>\n
Willis accepted people were under “no obligation” to believe her analysis until they started feeling the improvement for themselves.<\/p>\n
“New Zealanders have been very resilient,” she said. “Your efforts are not in vain… we have better times ahead of us.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finance minister Nicola Willis said banks should pass on as much as possible. Photo: Nick Monro Finance Minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[48,138,47,219,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-155858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-audio","tag-business","tag-current-affairs","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}