“Australia’s dollar dropped against most major peers after Chinese factory output had its slowest start to a year since 2009, damping the outlook for the South Pacific nation’s commodity exports.
The so-called Aussie declined for a second day against its U.S. counterpart before a report on U.S. retail sales forecast to show continued improvement in the world’s biggest economy, following better-than-expected payrolls data. New Zealand’s dollar, known as the kiwi, traded near the lowest in more than two months against the greenback.
“The combination of weaker Chinese industrial production and a strong U.S. jobs number was never going to be good for the Aussie,” said Hans Kunnen, the Sydney-based chief economist at St. George Bank Ltd. “Aussie and kiwi will remain under pressure in the short term.”
The Australian dollar fell 0.2 percent to $1.0221 as of 5:04 p.m. in Sydney, extending a 0.3 percent decline at the end of last week. The New Zealand dollar slid 0.3 percent to 82.00 U.S. cents from March 8, when it touched 81.88 cents, the lowest since Dec. 28.
Chinese industrial production increased 9.9 percent in the first two months of 2013 from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said March 9. That trailed the 10.6 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. China is the largest trading partner of both Australia and New Zealand…..”
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