A review of things you need to know before you go home on Thursday; no rate changes, ADHB gets lions share, NZTA to fully fund SkyPath, lower yields for NZGBs, Moody's cautious, swaps down, NZD softer

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report again today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here either.

PET PROJECT
Almost half of the $750 mln allocated for new funding of national capital projects in the 2018 Budget will be spent on upgrading just one set of Auckland hospitals (ADHB). And relatively little for either the Waitemata DHB (the country's largest) or the Counties Manukau DHB (Middlemore and South Auckland). Everyone else has to share the remaining $450 mln. Incidentally, that takes our tally of outstanding or planned large Auckland capital projects to $65.8 bln. See the list here.

A FREEBIE FOR AUCKLAND
Nationwide taxpayers are to fund the Auckland Harbour Bridget SkyPath project, with the whole $67 mln cost to be funded by central Government funding via the NZTA. It will be open in 2021.

FEE-FOR-NO-SERVICE CLAIM
Vodafone has been caught in a fee-for-no-service claim by the Commerce Commission who have filed court charges over the matter. It involves a Vodafone practice of charging for a full calendar month of final costs even though a termination date mid month was agreed.

SURGE FOR SAFETY
Lower yields are flowing through faster now for NZGB bond tenders. Today's $150 mln tender for 2025s (about a 7 year term) was funded with investors getting just 2.23%. That compares with 2.44% for the same bond just one month ago and 2.77% in the equivalent February 2018 tender. Despite the lower return, this issue was wildly popular being covered with offers 5.2 times and only 12 of the 46 bids received were successful.

NO MORE ACCELERATION
Ratings agency Moody's is getting a little cautions when it looks ahead at global growth prospects. They say "Growth prospects for many of the G-20 economies remain solid, but there are indications that the synchronous acceleration of growth heading into 2018 is now giving way to diverging trends. The near term global outlook for most advanced economies is broadly resilient, in contrast to the weakening of some developing economies in the face of emerging headwinds from rising US trade protectionism, tightening external liquidity conditions and elevated oil prices. We expect the G-20 countries to grow 3.3% in 2018 and 3.1% in 2019. The advanced economies will grow 2.3% in 2018 and 2.0% in 2019, while G-20 emerging markets will remain the growth drivers, at 5.1% in both 2018 and 2019."

ENORMOUS TOURIST SURGE
Mainland Chinese tourists made more than 71.3 mln trips outside their country in the first half of the year, a +15% surge year on year, taking advantage of easier visa approvals and more direct international flights connecting with lower-tier Chinese cities. Tourist numbers from China to New Zealand rose +17% over the same period amounting to 230,000 trips. That makes our share just 0.3% of this enormous flood.

RE-JIGGED NAFTA CLOSE
The US Administration is signaling that a US-Mexico agreement on NAFTA is close, and a handshake deal might be announced tomorrow. Then it is up to Canada to assess whether it is good enough for them.

SWAP RATES LOWER
Wholesale swap rates are down -1 bp for durations of 2 to 10 years. The UST 10yr is still at 2.82%, down -1 bp. The US 2-10 curve has now fallen just +22 bps, another 11 year low. The Aussie Govt 10yr is at 2.53% (down -1 bp), the China Govt 10yr is at 3.65% (also down -1 bp), while the NZ Govt 10 yr is now at 2.61%, unchanged. The 90 day bank bill rate is also unchanged at 1.91%.

BITCOIN RETREATS
The bitcoin price is back down at US$6,392 a -4.7% fall from this time yesterday.

NZD SOFTER
The NZD is a softer today against the USD at 66.7 USc. On the cross rates we are marginally firmer at 91.5 AUc as they work though their political leadership crisis, and 57.7 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 at 70.5.

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