HSBC economists do not believe the halving of dairy prices last year will hurt New Zealand's economy as much as some expect.
Chief economist in Sydney Paul Bloxham said that was because dairy farmers did not borrow as much during the boom in dairy prices and so the fall would not have caused acute economy-wide problems.
Mr Bloxham also said the rest of the economy was in an upswing and future dairy prices looked firm.
He said Chinese dairy imports have dropped to seemingly unsustainably low levels and New Zealand accounts for about 60 percent of China's dairy imports.
Mr Bloxham also said he thinks New Zealand's immigration boom is coming to its end, largely because he was expecting the Australian labour market to recover.
