The Pound / New Zealand Dollar exchange rate is 0.299% lower on the day with 1 GBP = 2.1952 NZD. The Pound / Australian Dollar exchange rate is 0.206% higher with 1 GBP = 1.6072 AUD. "The wrong sort of monetary policy decision by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand was not enough to keep the New Zealand dollar out of jail this morning though," says Mark Deans at Moneycorp. Prior to the announcement analysts had been divided about what would happen. Many were predicting a quarter-percentage-point cut while some thought the RBNZ would do nothing. Both camps got it wrong. The RBNZ lowered its official cash rate by half a percentage point from 3% to 2.5%, returning it to the record low it occupied for 14 months until June last year. Deans says: "Reaction by the New Zealand dollar was surprisingly muted. It lost only about a cent against sterling on the news. "Looking ahead, however, it is hard to see how it will attract buyers in the near future with the NZ economy distressed by the earthquake, inflation at 4% and a negative real interest rate of -1.5%." Over to the northwest, the Australian dollar had its own burden to bear, in the shape of a disappointing employment report. After reporting 24k new jobs in January the ABS was expected to come up with another 21k in February. Oh no, the January figure was slashed to 7,700 and 10,100 jobs disappeared in February. What should have been a total of 45,000 new jobs over the two-month period turned into the loss of 2,400 jobs. The Aussie took another hit a couple of hours later when China reported a US$7.3 billion trade deficit for the same month.

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