RBNZ Open to Increasing QE in ‘Rapidly Evolving Situation’

New Zealand’s central bank is open to increasing the size and scope of its asset-purchase program to boost stimulus as the coronavirus pandemic threatens to throw the economy into a deep recession.

“We’re in a rapidly evolving situation, the assessment of the economy in financial markets is moving very quickly, and that’s what we will have to take into account when we reconsider the size and nature of the program that we run,” Reserve Bank Assistant Governor Christian Hawkesby said in a telephone interview Wednesday in Wellington. “We are very open to changing the size of the program to an appropriate size given our assessment of the economic outlook.”