What a difference a few weeks make. At the beginning of the year, I thought the economy would pick up momentum, inflation would soon come down, and polling trends would continue, possibly leading to a change of government come election time. I also thought that, after talking about inflation in my past columns, it was time to shift the conversation to a different topic, like New Zealand’s notoriously low productivity ranking and that businesses spend more time on regulation compliance than doing their job.
However, a series of natural disasters for the North Island and a change of Prime Minister has mixed things up. The economy will take a little longer to recover after the destruction of productive resources, the shortage of supplies puts upward pressure on prices, we have seen a resurrection of the Labour party in the polls and I am back talking about the state of our economy and inflation.