“We’ve penciled in a 0.3% QoQ economic expansion for Q3, unchanged from our previous forecast and in line with the RBNZ’s November MPS pick,” analysts at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) noted while previewing the top-tier economic data from New Zealand.

Additional quotes

"The November MPS attributed more of Q2’s strong GDP read (+0.9% q/q) to demand than we expected given the recent easing across a number of key capacity indicators. While the Q3 data will be important insofar as it could provide light on whether strength in Q2 was momentum or perhaps cyclone-related, the evolution of capacity indicators from here (including the labour market) will be the most important data for diagnosing the implications for inflation pressures."

"Brace for noise: Q3’s usual annual benchmarking process, ongoing data quality improvements, and lingering quirky seasonality add a healthy dose of uncertainty to our forecast. We could see sizable data revisions too."

"The annual current account deficit is expected to narrow just 0.1%pts of GDP to 7.4%, still way too wide to call sustainable but at least moving in the right direction."