11 March 2024 – We’re investing in a new Business Expectations Survey, Tara-ā-Umanga, to better understand the economic outlook including the inflation expectations of key decision makers.
This will be the third expectations survey from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua, alongside our household survey, Tara-ā-Whare, and our longstanding Survey of Expectations, which focuses on the views of experts, such as professional forecasters, economists, and industry leaders.
The new industry-wide Business Expectations Survey is an expansion in our knowledge about business expectations. Business expectations are critically important as they may affect investment, hiring, wage- and price-setting decisions.
There will be no immediate impact on the current Survey of Expectations canvassing 30 to 50 professional forecasters and economists, and industry leaders. We are committed to maintaining the consistency of the long-running time series for professional forecasters.
Our investment in a new industry-wide survey will also provide evidence to support decision-making across many aspects of our mandate, beyond monetary policy. The results of this survey will support our forecasting, policy development, and research activity.
The new survey will ask six core questions each quarter covering business expectations of: prices, wages, growth, unemployment, the Official Cash Rate, and exchange rates. Occasional and rotating questions will be included in future to support many aspects of our work.
Following a pilot survey starting in April, we intend to expand the new survey to about 400 businesses around the country and across a range of industries. We expect to start publishing results later this year.
What we want feedback on
We want to hear your views on the proposed sample design and content.
Some of the topics we’ve highlighted in the consultation paper are:
the industries we propose focusing on and sectors we plan to leave out of the sample – the aim is to ensure we hear from those businesses with the greatest impact on overall price-setting;
the rotating panel design, where we will repeatedly survey some businesses to understand how their views change over time;
the core questions we plan to include every quarter; and,
our approach to occasional and rotating questions.
Read the consultation paper
Read the consultation paper here. https://govt.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=bd316aa7ee4f5679c56377819&id=e7fb4c90e9&e=f3c68946f8
