Inflation & Prices
New Zealand’s Inflation Data Gap Leaves RBNZ Alone Among Peers
- All other OECD members now have monthly consumer price indexes
- ‘If there was ever a time for a monthly CPI, it would be now’
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New Zealand is set to become the only nation in the OECD that doesn’t publish a monthly inflation report and it has no plans to do so, even though the central bank wants more timely data as it battles the fastest price increases in a generation.
Australia’s statistics bureau last month announced it will start publishing a monthly Consumer Price Index from October but Statistics New Zealand has no current plans to follow suit, a spokesperson said. That leaves New Zealand as the last remaining member of the 38-nation OECD still relying on quarterly data, meaning a three-month gap between its inflation reports.