Slowdown becomes a little sharper

Although we wouldn’t recommend placing too much weight on the quarterly rate of GDP growth in any one quarter, the respective 0.2% and 0.4% rises in Australia and New Zealand in the second quarter mark a clear slowdown fromthe rates of the previous two years. (See Chart below.) The early indicatorssuggest that growth could be just as weak in the third quarter too. Looking ahead, we expect that GDP in both economies will struggle to rise by much more than 2% next year.