Adrian Orr: Opening remarks to Finance and Expenditure Committee

Opening remarks by Mr Adrian Orr, Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, to the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), Wellington, 24 November 2022.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Tēnā koutou katoa

It is good to be with you this morning to present our November Monetary Policy Statement. I'm joined by Assistant Governor/General Manager of Economics, Financial Markets and Banking, Karen Silk, and our Chief Economist Paul Conway, and I acknowledge our other Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) colleagues some of whom are with us today or watching online.

Today we are here to outline our most recent Monetary Policy Statement and the reasoning for our OCR decision.

To provide the best context possible for the Committee's decision I will refer briefly to the Reserve Bank's recently published Review of our monetary policy actions over the five years ended September 2022.

The Review - undertaken in conjunction with the Board of Te Pūtea Matua and peer reviewed by two independent international experts - is a legislative requirement. It is also a timely requirement from the Committee's perspective.

Over the period reviewed, the global and New Zealand economy has experienced historically significant economic shocks, in large part due to the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.