(RTTNews) - Friday in Asia, the New Zealand dollar plummeted against its major counterparts as Asian equities extended a global slump, reducing demand for higher-yielding currencies.

The NZ dollar plunged to a 2-week low against the greenback and the euro, 17-day low against the yen and a 1-week low against the aussie.

Asian stock markets are mostly trading in the red with notable losses today with the overnight negative close on Wall Street on the back of some disappointing job reports hurting sentiment to a significant extent.

With doubts about the pace of economic recovery surfacing again, investors seem quite reluctant to go in for any big buying, and are in fact, looking to trim down positions substantially.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index dropped 1.4% and the broader All Ordinaries index fell 1.3%. New Zealand's NZX-50 index declined 0.9%, Japan's Nikkei 225 index lost 1%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped 0.7% and China's Shangai Composite index dipped 0.4%.

Adding to kiwi's slide, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand report said that total credit card billings in New Zealand fell a seasonally adjusted 0.4% year-on-year in October after the 2.3% decrease in the previous month. This is the eleventh annual decline recorded in credit card billings in the past 12 months.

On a monthly basis, total card billings were up 0.2% in October, rebounding from the 1% decrease in the prior month.
New Zealand's central bank should leave its benchmark interest rate at a record low to help a recovery from the worst recession in three decades, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said yesterday.

"Given weak and fragile private demand, it is appropriate that monetary and fiscal policies remain expansionary for the time being," the OECD said in its Economic Outlook, released in Paris yesterday.

Central bank Governor Alan Bollard has kept the official cash rate at 2.5 percent since April and last month said he expects to leave borrowing costs unchanged until the second half of 2010 because the economy needs stimulus.

New Zealand's recovery may be slow because consumers are reluctant to spend and manufacturers are battling to cope with a soaring currency.

The New Zealand dollar, which closed yesterday's trading at 0.7314 against the U.S. currency fell to a 2-week low of 0.7261 in early Asian deals on Friday. On the downside, 0.710 is seen as the next target level for the NZ dollar.

The kiwi-greenback pair tumbled to a 1-month low of 0.7086 on November 02. Although the kiwi gained 6% thereafter, it pulled back again after reaching a 3-week high of 0.7528 on November 16. Since then, the NZ currency has lost more than 3%.

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