The shadow board consists of ANZ chief economist Cameron Bagrie, The Warehouse chief executive Luke Blunt, NZIER principal economist Shamubeel Eaqub, Westpac chief economist Dominick Stephens, Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly, Victoria University's Professor Viv Hall, Bank of New Zealand head of research Stephen Toplis, Steel & Tube chief executive Dave Taylor and Professor Christoph Thoenissen, also of Victoria University.
While six of the nine were decidedly of the view that sitting pat on 2.5 per cent would be the right call, Eaqub favours a 50-basis-point cut, even though he expects the bank will remain on hold until next year. "Typically, low interest rates discourage savings and encourage borrowing. To date, the opposite has happened."
Toplis sees the Reserve Bank as caught between three possible scenarios: that the economy muddles through the next few years with modest growth; or that somewhere in the world, most likely Europe, implodes and takes the rest of us with it; or that the reconstruction of Christchurch "goes nuts" and proves much more inflationary than expected.
Toplis puts a probability of 45 per cent on the muddle-through scenario, 35 per cent on global meltdown and 20 per cent on the rebuilding proving much more of an inflationary problem than anticipated. Steel & Tube's Dave Taylor sees the distribution of risks similarly to Toplis.
In the most recent Reuters poll of 14 forecasters, none expects a rise in the OCR this time, four think it will have increased by the end of September and nine by the end of the year.