NZ dollar claws its way up against Aussie

The New Zealand dollar clawed its way off nine and a half year lows against the Australian dollar today on demand from exporters.

The NZ dollar was A77.10c at 5pm after dropping as low as A76.86c early today from A77.54c at 5pm yesterday. Around 8am the NZ dollar was buying about A77.02c.

"We've been bubbling around near 10-year lows around US77c. There was speculative interest to push kiwi-aussie lower but that ran into quite heavy demand from exporters to hedge the cross rate at quite low levels," said Mike Jones, currency strategist at BNZ.

The NZ dollar was higher against the greenback on a day in which stronger-than-expected Australian gross domestic product (GDP) data reinforced the Reserve Bank of Australia's move this week to hike the official interest rate by 25 basis points to 4 per cent.

Mr Jones said the 0.9 per cent quarterly rise in Australian GDP was in line with expectations but revisions to previous data made the annual figure higher than expected.

"We saw kiwi dragged a bit higher in line with the aussie," he said.

"Though really the aussie dollar and kiwi dollar have been sidelined for most of the day and the focus has been on sterling."

Sterling rose on a squeeze of short positions, hopes that Greece will make budget deficit cuts and on strong stock futures.

The NZ dollar has been at near quarter century highs against the British currency but it fell to 46.28p by 5pm today from 46.60p at the local open and 46.70p at 5pm yesterday.

The NZ dollar was buying 0.5110 euro from 0.5152 at the same time yesterday, and was down to 61.81 yen from 62.26 yen yesterday. The trade weighted index was down to 64.39 at 5pm from 64.69 yesterday.

- NZPA