Adrian Orr: Doing whatever it takes to achieve low and stable inflation, and his ideal scenario for monetary policy in a year's time

Of Interest

Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr says he's "extremely confident" the world is heading back to a period of low inflation, saying the central bank is prepared to do "whatever it takes" to achieve its mandate of low and stable inflation.

Speaking in in the latest episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast, Orr talks about the reaction from financial markets to last week's Reserve Bank monetary policy review, what its Monetary Policy Committee members will be watching between now and when they next review monetary policy on February 28, and what the Reserve Bank would need to see to be more relaxed about inflation.

"We just need to repeat we are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve our mandate, [of] low and stable inflation. If we get further inflation shocks there may be more work to do. So we're in a holding position, but we've made it clear where our nerves sit," Orr says.

"Basically we need to see more spare capacity in the economy to have the real confidence that the inflation pressures are coming off. All the indicators are moving in the right direction, but there's a lot of news still to arrive on the table."

He also talks about "historically significant" immigration, noting countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with strong net inward migration are "having the highest core inflation challenges."

With the new National-led government set to remove the Reserve Bank's requirement to "support maximum sustainable employment," from its monetary policy remit, Orr discusses how different monetary policy might have been over recent years if that hadn't been part of the Reserve Bank's mandate.

Orr also says profit-led inflation, businesses pushing through price increases under cover of news about a major shock to the economy because there'll be less pushback from customers at such times, has been happening in NZ as it has overseas.

"We just used to call that inflation expectations and generalised inflation," Orr says.

"Whenever you've got high inflation people can hide price rises even though it's not something specific to their good or service. They can get away with high or variable inflation, they can start shifting relative prices around, and then that leads to more generalised inflation as input costs rise and wage costs rise and so on."

"And it's that scramble and mess that causes long-term inflation problems. And so I would say all of those things have been happening in New Zealand as they have been everywhere else," Orr says.

"This is the challenge for monetary policy, we have to lean against that desire to tuck a little price increase in behind generalised inflation hoping no one notices. Consumers have to be laser-like focused and think 'is that right, should I be shopping somewhere else?'," Orr adds.

In the podcast Orr also discusses the degree to which Official Cash Rate (OCR) rises are responsible for reducing inflation, inequities involved with monetary policy, whether price controls could be used to help fight inflation, whether the Reserve Bank's monetary policy should be required to support sustainable house prices, what he expects to see from the Commerce Commission's market study into retail banking competition, the level where he'd consider the OCR to be neutral in that it's neither stimulating nor constraining economic activity, his ideal scenario for monetary policy a year from now, and how he's "fully convinced" the world is heading back to low and stable inflation but there may be higher interest rates on average to achieve that.

*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.