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Photo: RNZ An official cash rate cut might be cause for celebration for under-pressure borrowers - but there is a reminder that it has been prompted by "extraordinary weakness" in the economy that may still be yet to fully hit. Council of Trade Unions chief economist Craig Renney said he felt like he was "taking crazy pills" after the OCR announcement on Wednesday. He said people celebrating the cut were not acknowledging the dire economic conditions that prompted the Reserve Bank to pull it forward by a full year. The bank now expects unemployment to peak at 5.4 percent, representing an extra 10,000 out-of-work compared to its May forecast. It expects the country to have been in recession through the middle two quarters of this year, and for gross domestic product to remain smaller for ...

(File image) Photo: Suppled / Foodstuffs New Zealanders are likely losing tens of millions of dollars a year from supermarket pricing errors, the Commerce Commission says. Grocery Commissioner Pierre van Heerden said the commission was still hearing about too many examples of misleading or inaccurate pricing. He called on the major supermarkets to improve and publicise their refund policies, which he said would create an incentive for them to improve the accuracy of their pricing. Customers should be able to trust that the price advertised was what they would pay, he said. "Kiwi consumers expect and deserve better. The continuing level of pricing errors happening across the major supermarkets is simply unacceptable, and I don't believe the major supermarkets are doing enough to fix thes...

In a file picture taken on 2 January 2009, heavy smoke billows from the chimney of the a factory in Pietarsaari, Finland. Photo: AFP Australian-owned company NZ Steel was the biggest beneficiary of a government scheme to shield exporters from paying for their carbon emissions last year, followed by Methanex. NZ Steel reported to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that it made 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from its Glenbrook Steel Mill in 2023. It claimed 1.8 million free carbon credits from the government in 2023, under a system called industrial allocation. Even at 2023's lowest carbon price of $37 a tonne, the free credits given to NZ Steel (owned by Bluescope) would be worth $66 million, based on its 1.8 million tonnes allocation. The freebies under the Emissi...