Sir Robert says Bank’s staff inexperienced

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 26

Sir Robert says Bank’s staff inexperienced

PA Wellington The Reserve Bank does not have staff with either the experience or ability to handle the Government’s money market policies, according to the former National Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon.

“The development of new and sophisticated capital markets is causing grave concern all over the world and for New Zealand, with a quite inadequate supply of experienced personnel in the private sector and even more so in the bank itself, to try to operate the completely free policies that we have Implemented is the height of folly,” Sir

Robert said. For a country the size of New Zealand to take the free market steps it had had aroused international amazement, he said. “It is only a matter of time before a series of business and personal tragedies forces a change of policy. “Only a Government totally lacking in experience, as the present Government is, would have permitted this ridiculous situation to reach the stage that it has.”

Sir Robert’s comments followed the default by Rakiura Holdings, a small Wellington company, on a $lOO million Government

stock tender. The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, said last week that it was “quite extraordinary” that Sir Robert’s Government had allowed a company with a nominal capital of $lOOO the right to deal in millions of dollars by way of tender. The Reserve Bank had obviously followed the political directive of the previous Administration, he said.

“I think it was not prudent to do so,” Mr Lange said.

“I do not know why the previous Minister of Finance (Sir Robert) exempted Rakiura Holdings, but exempt he did.”