Robertson Signals Unease With RBNZ’s Requested Housing Tool
- Finance minister speaks in interview with Bloomberg News
- Not too worried about strength of New Zealand dollar
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New Zealand’s government is focused on giving first-time buyers access to the housing market, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said, suggesting he’s unlikely to allow the central bank to add debt-to-income ratios to its toolkit.
The government is “obliged” to consider the Reserve Bank’s request for DTIs “but that doesn’t automatically translate to approving it,” Robertson said in an interview with Bloomberg Thursday in Wellington. The last time the RBNZ asked for the tool, “there were concerns raised by the previous government around affordability issues, particularly for first-home buyers and those on lower incomes, so that would be a factor that I will take into consideration,” he said.