Dollar responds positively to Budget

The New Zealand dollar responded positively to today's budget announcement, rising against those of our main trading partners.

The kiwi was already improving against a number of currencies before the 2pm announcement, but got a boost immediately afterwards.

It was worth an even US68c at 2pm and then rose to US68.27c, but was still well shy of the US70.80c from the week's beginning.

It also rose against the Australian dollar, up to A80.89c, from A80.63c and also against the Japanese yen, to 62.54 from 62.34. It also rose to 47.40p against the British pound, from 47.24p at 2pm.

The New Zealand sharemarket showed a muted response to the budget; the benchmark NZX-50 index improved only slightly to 3120.472 from 3118.837.

- NZPA