New Zealand March services PMI plummets back into contraction at 47.5 (prior 53.0)

New Zealand’s services sector fell back into contraction during March. The BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index (PSI) comes in at 47.5:

• prior 53.0
• long-term average is 53.4

BNZ’s Senior Economist Doug Steel:

• “combining today’s weak PSI activity with last week’s similarly weak PMI activity, yields a composite reading that would be consistent with GDP falling below by more than 2% compared to year earlier levels. That is much weaker than what folk are forecasting”.