The year-on-year rate of change in the consumer price index (CPI, all items less fresh food), which had been minus 0.5 percent just before the introduction of QQE, increased to as high as 1.5 percent in April 2014, excluding the effects of the consumption tax hike.
7 / 12  BIS central bankers' speeches  With the New Zealand economy becoming generally more integrated with the global economy, we are likely to see less variability in measures of economic slack and also less variability in labour costs, consistent with a flattening of the Philips Curve. New Zealand has always been a price taker for goods traded in the international markets.