RBNZ’s Conway: Inflation sticky near-term, could fall more quickly medium term

In a speech today, RBNZ Chief Economist Paul Conway discussed the complexities of bringing inflation sustainably back to target, noting “remaining challenges” and various risks and uncertainties.

Conway pointed out that in the “near term”, inflation might be “more persistent” than current projections suggest. He highlighted that domestic or non-tradables inflation and services sector inflation have remained higher than expected, indicating a “sticky” inflationary environment.

Conversely, Conway also sees potential for inflation to “fall more quickly” than anticipated over the “medium term”. Factors such as increasing spare capacity in product and labor markets and shifting business and household inflation expectations could accelerate the decline in inflation.

He explained that RBNZ’s current policy strategy is “balancing these opposing factors.” The bank will closely monitor indicators of core inflation, non-tradables inflation, services inflation, and inflation expectations to assess how these risks unfold. The labor market will also be a critical signal of capacity pressure.

Full speech of RBNZ’s Conway here.