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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; the NZD hits 81 on TWI, regional GDP data released, finco offers 8% term deposit rate

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; the NZD hits 81 on TWI, regional GDP data released, finco offers 8% term deposit rate
For Friday, March 28, 2014. <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Image sourced from Shutterstock.com</a>

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

CITIES WIN REGIONAL GDP SHARE GROWTH
Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury all saw good gains in per capita GDP in the March 2013 year over the prior year according to the StatsNZ data released today. Many of the major rural areas saw declines, even though most of them have much better per capital GDP levels.

FEI RAISES INTEREST RATES
This small, but now credit rated finance company increased their eighteen month term deposit rate to 8.00% from 7.50%. It has been a long time since we have seen an 8% offer rate.

GUIDLINES FOR NEW BUILD EXEMPTIONS
The Reserve Bank today published revised rules that exempt construction loans from the Loan-to-Value Ratio (LVR) ‘speed limit’ introduced last October.

WMP PRICES FALL SHARPLY
The USDA monitoring international dairy prices and todays report indicated some quite big falls, accentualted by the high currency. WMP has gone from NZ$6,267 per tonne at the beginning of 2013 to NZ$5,497 today. That's a NZ$770/tonne fall or 15% in 13 weeks.

WHOLESALE RATES
Swap rates rose by another 2 bps pushed up by the mortgage fixing demand, whereas 5 years and longer fell by 1 bps. The flattening of the swap curve continues and the run is starting to get impressive. The 90 day bank bill rates were up 1 bps again today and now at 3.12%.

OUR CURRENCY
It's happened again! The NZ dollar flat lined until 1pm and then rose sharply. Not sure why today either. It is now up to 86.9 USc, 93.6 AUc, and the TWI is now touching 81.0. Yikes, that's high. The gains against the Euro are impressive; we are now at 63.2 euro cents.

(Updated with data on the WMP price falls.)

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