Travelling in Europe we might have welcomed a strong New Zealand dollar, but it’s difficult to consider the dollar is high when it takes more than two to buy a euro and if it costs a dollar at home it usually costs a euro here so everything is twice as expensive.
Besides anything we gained while here will be more than cancelled out by the impact of the exchange rate on sales of meat,wool and milk.
The $NZ was at 59 US cents when Fonterra announced its forecast payout for the season. It hit a 10 month high of 66.9 cents this week.
The forecast payout for this season hasn’t changed but MAF economists are prediciting next season’s payout will be lower before recovering a bit in the 2011/12 season.
Thankyou for highlighting the two sides of the fluctuating dollar. It will impact more on those who are more or less exposed to the domestic or the overseas components of that relative value. We are however better off than the days when a minister who for whatever political reasons set the value and the serfs had to live with it.Also it was almost impossible to avoid the repercussions.