The New Zealand dollar rose today, managing to log gains against all other most-traded currencies (though by now, the kiwi has erased its rally versus the Great Britain pound). The likely reason for the currency’s great performance was the news about the easing of coronavirus-related restrictions in the country. The positive general market sentiment also likely played its part in the rally.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the government will lower the lockdown level from 2 to 1 for the whole New Zealand next week, except for the Auckland region. Auckland will remain at the 2.5 level due to the unexpected outbreak of new coronavirus cases. The settings for the region will be reviewed on September 21.
As for macroeconomic data, Statistics New Zealand reported that the number of overseas visitor arrivals rose by 8.8% to 3,831 in July. That was a huge slowdown compared with the June gain of 60.8%. The number of visitor arrivals was slowly increasing since tanking by about 99% in April after the travel restrictions were put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the number still looks meager compared with the pre-pandemic levels, when sometimes the number of visitors was reaching half a million.
NZD/USD climbed from 0.6657 to 0.6697 as of 8:16 GMT today. EUR/NZD declined from 1.7752 to 1.7116. NZD/JPY advanced from 70.58 to 70.96. At the same time, GBP/NZD was about flat at 1.9181 after falling to the daily low of 1.9123 earlier.
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