WELLINGTON (Dow Jones)--The New Zealand dollar ended lower Tuesday as lackluster New Zealand economic data and a falling euro weighed on the market. ANZ Foreign Exchange Manager Murray Hindley said the Kiwi was under increasing pressure following the lead of the euro and the Australian dollar, which was also weakening. He added New Zealand data including soft May dwelling consent figures released earlier, and weaker on-month business confidence numbers released in a National Bank of New Zealand survey late Monday, had taken the shine off the New Zealand dollar. Statistics New Zealand said earlier residential building permits issued in May fell a seasonally adjusted 9.6% from April, when they rose a revised 8.4% on the month. Approvals were down 11.1% from the same month a year earlier. "Maybe the gloss is starting to come off the Kiwi; we have had a pretty good run of it in the last couple of weeks," he said. Hindley said the New Zealand dollar was also struggling against the Australian dollar as investors speculated about the future of the Australian mining tax. Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Tuesday she was confident renewed goodwill between the government and mining industry would help resolve the dispute over a controversial plan to levy a new 40% tax on mining super profits. BNZ foreign exchange strategist Mike Jones said that given the dearth of market-moving local data later this week he suspected the fortunes of the New Zealand dollar would rest with offshore markets. "In particular, a slew of important U.S. data releases, culminating in Friday's non-farm payrolls, will shed some light on whether recent fears over the strength of the U.S. recovery are justified," Jones said. He added that if doubts over the U.S. economy's recovery continued to undermine the greenback he would rule out the Kiwi reaching US$0.7200. New Zealand government bond prices rose, while interest rates swaps fell as global uncertainties infected the New Zealand market. A local bond trader said support levels for the 10-year Treasury yield had been broken and yields in the Australian bond market had also been falling. "We slightly underperformed the offshore markets and so we are now just playing a bit of catch up," he said. -By Lucy Craymer, Dow Jones Newswires; 64-4-471-5990; lucy.craymer@dowjones.com

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