The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has released a paper on the economic impacts of Covid-19 containment measures
- sees impact ranges from estimated 4% reduction in GDP under alert level 1 up to 37% of GDP under level 4
- sees GDP around 37 % lower during period of alert level 4 than would have been without any restrictions
- sees GDP around 19 % lower during period of alert level 3 than would have been without any restrictions
- sees impact not uniform across economy, with some sectors more heavily effected than others such as tourism
- during 4-1/2 week period at alert level 3, equates to fall of about NZ$5 bln in production relative to baseline, reducing annual GDP by 1.7%
- economic impact on firms is highly uncertain under alert level 3
HAs triggered a drop in NZD, just a few points. So the RBNZ here is telling us that the extent of the hit to the economy is an unknown. Now we all know NZ policies are in place to address the impact as best they can, and they are open to doing more - so that seems to have minimised the impact
