Larry Williams Drive

I’m sorry to say it’s a bit of a bad day - a day of rather unpleasant economic news, I’m afraid. Let’s start with the GDP number. It came in at 0.2 percent for the final quarter of last year, which is very much at the low end of expectations. We were looking for something in the range of 0.2 percent to 0.5 percent, with 0.5 percent being the Reserve Bank’s forecast. The problem with that is those were the good times. That number was recorded before the Iran war kicked off, so it’s not much of a place to be starting from, is it? Now the good news is that at least we are recovering. Yes, it’s slow - it’s grinding - which we always knew it would be but it is real. We recorded 1.3 percent growth for the year. That’s not a lot, but it is growth and it marks the first time in more than two years that the economy has posted annual growth. Because the GDP result is at the low end, it also gives the Reserve Bank a bit more latitude when it comes to its OCR decision. It can look through the inflation spike that the Ira