Christina Leung: Economist predicts Official Cash Rate to rise dependent on how Covid outbreak goes

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge · Aug 18, 2021 · 2m

An economist says an Official Cash Rate rise in October is on the cards, but it depends on how this Covid-19 outbreak goes.

So far, ten people have tested positive for the virus, but early modelling shows 50 to 120 people could've been infected before the lockdown.

The Reserve Bank has kept the OCR at 0.25 percent because of Alert Level Four.

NZIER principal economist Christina Leung told Kate Hawkesby you only have to look across the Tasman to see how quickly things can change.

"We can see there's a resilience in the economy, however, having a community outbreak does throw a lot of…