The New Zealand dollar declined against the U.S. and Australian currencies today as the country’s services industry continued to decline for a ninth month in a row last December, according the Performance of Services Index that was released yesterday.

The index of the service industry was reported at 48.0 for December — up from 47.3 in November; but the reading below 50 means a contraction in all of the country’s service sectors. The report was released yesterday at 21:30 GMT and influenced Forex market tendencies during the early Asian trading session.

Although the economy of New Zealand isn’t currently doing worse than the similar Australian or Canadian ones, the analysts believe that it will probably be one of the last to exit the recession due to the social-aimed monetary policy. The bad news from New Zealand will continue to press on the NZD at least for the first half of 2009.

NZD/USD fell from 0.5270 to 0.5261 as of 8:36 GMT today. NZD/JPY rose from 46.57 to 46.70 after falling as low as 46.17 earlier today. AUD/NZD rose from 1.2364 to 1.2441.

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