Oceania: Oceania Finance Profile

Oceania Finance Profile

The size and sophistication of the Australian financial market and the assets pool managed, combined with the industry’s world-class skills base, has helped make it a major centre of capital markets activity in the Asia Pacific.

After Japan, Australia has the largest and most liquid stock market in the region and the seventh largest in the world.

Australia’s banking system is highly regarded as transparent, competitive and sophisticated and was named both the fourth soundest system in the world and number three for regulation of securities exchanges (out of 134 countries) by the World Economic Forum in 2008.

The NZ economy is a mixed economy based on free market principles. It has a large agricultural sector, as well as sizeable manufacturing and service industries.

In response to the internati onal credit crisis, New Zealand's Reserve Bank began lowering the Official Cash Rate (OCR) in July 2008 and introduced a range of faciliti es designed to ensure that adequate liquidity was available to the banking sector. The government provided further support, introducing retail and wholesale bank guarantees, along with personal income tax cuts on 1 October 2008 and again on 1 April 2009. Other measures taken by the government include: an accelerated package of ‘ready-to-roll’ infrastructure projects spanning the housing, transport, education and energy sectors at an estimated cost of almost 500 million; and a relief package designed to assist small and medium-sized businesses (which make up the largest proporti on of New Zealand firms) in order to reduce compliance costs and improve the business environment in the face of the crisis.