Currency: Dollar climbs over US57c

The New Zealand dollar continued a weekend rally today as investors became more comfortable with the global economic story.

At 5pm today the NZ dollar was at US57.40c, up from US57.05c at 8am and US56.55c at 5pm on Friday.

Reports on Friday US time showed US consumers felt more confident about their economy and a gauge of US manufacturing pointed to a recovery.

This made investors more likely to buy risky currencies like the New Zealand and Australian dollars. The Australian dollar rose to US73.90c, its highest in seven months, and was US73.52c as the New Zealand market finished.

The NZ dollar was mixed against the Australian dollar at A78.05c at 5pm, down from A78.15c at the open but up from A77.76c on Friday.

Statistics New Zealand said full-time equivalent employees, filled jobs and seasonally adjusted total paid hours all decreased from a year earlier but analysts said more important data on the state of the labour market is due late this week.

The Government's announcement of a new bond maturity today set to become a new ten-year benchmark was welcomed. News that the bond programme this year will be $1 billion bigger was not expected but was seen as sensible given the programme was ahead of where it needed to be for the year and there will be big issuance in subsequent years.

Trading in Asia is light because Tokyo has its Golden Week holiday this week.

The NZ dollar rose to 0.4310 euro from 0.4264 on Friday, and to 57.10 yen from 55.95.

The trade weighted index was 56.68 from 56.07 on Friday.

- NZPA