Gloomier view of growth rates

While one bank is picking strong domestic demand to deliver higher growth in the second half of the year, another looked further ahead to mid-2004 and predicted annual growth would halve to 2.5 per cent.

ASB Bank expects gross domestic product (the value of goods and services produced in New Zealand) to increase by 0.1 per cent in the three months to June when the data is reported on Friday. This is below the 0.4 per cent rise the Reserve Bank anticipated. At that rate, annual gdp growth would drop from 4.4 per cent in the March quarter to 3.9 per cent.

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