These reflect the assessment of a group of forecasters in each of the major countries to which New Zealand exports, and historically the average of these forecasts has tended to outperform the forecasting performance of any single forecaster.
We certainly have no reason to believe that we could produce better forecasts for our overseas markets than can the forecasters ‘on the ground’ in the countries concerned. But despite all this effort, we often end up wishing, with the benefit of hindsight, that we had run monetary policy slightly differently.