Simon Hartley

More office space is being added to the Harvest Court mall in central Dunedin, mall owner and developer Carl Angus says.

Record dairy product export levels have driven New Zealand's current account deficit to its lowest quarterly result since March 2010, underpinning expectations of a strong flourish to gross domestic product data out today. The current account measures New Zealand trade flows and investment returns.

Hirepool is being tipped for a $300 million initial public offering in coming months, buoyed by work expected from the Canterbury rebuild and the expanding Auckland housing market.

Otago-Southland, which leads the separate manufacturing index, slipped in the business services index yesterday, but remains in expansion and above the national tally.

Economists are picking a strong economic finish for 2013, with gross domestic product (GDP) for the quarter to December expected at 0.9%, when Statistics New Zealand data is released tomorrow.

Manufacturing in Otago-Southland leads the country - underpinned by production - with the overall index having been in expansion mode for the past 18 months.

Port Otago's land banking in Dunedin's upper harbour is slowly being expanded around Fryatt St, with five separate properties now covering about 6ha.

Port Otago's property subsidiary Chalmers Properties has increased its asset value from $83 million a decade ago, with subsequent purchases and developments, to recently push beyond $250 million for the first time. Senior business reporter Simon Hartley talks to Chalmers Properties general manager David Chafer about its widespread portfolio of investments, and market conditions.

The Reserve Bank has the interest-driving official cash rate (OCR) on the move after more than three and a-half years at 2.5%, but analysts are split on just how aggressively the rises will be applied.

The Meatworkers and Related Trades Union has taken a swipe at Silver Fern Farms' management getting double-digit pay rises, while staff are expected to accept no increase.

Repeated hikes to the interest-driving official cash rate, starting today, could add more than $100 a week to mortgage repayments within two years, Council of Trades Union economist Bill Rosenberg warns.

Fisher and Paykel Appliances' multimillion-dollar expansion of its laboratories and research and development facilities in Dunedin and East Tamaki, Auckland, is focused on expanding and new markets.

Otago house prices have mirrored the rising national price trend during February, as the Reserve Bank sets out to further dampen housing enthusiasm with its first interest-rate hike in almost three and a-half years tomorrow.

Easing pressures in the housing market will not deter the Reserve Bank from hiking the interest-driving official cash rate (OCR) tomorrow, as inflationary pressures and stronger gross domestic product data take precedence for the bank's forecasting.