Japan's Nikkei average hit its highest close in seven weeks on Friday, with exporters helped by speculation that the yen may weaken if the Bank of Japan takes additional steps to ease monetary policy next week.

The New Zealand Dollar registered a rise, touching its two-week high against the U. S. Dollar on Wednesday, after investors cut their short positions on the Kiwi ahead of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's monetary policy statement Thursday.

After witnessing a drop yesterday, New Zealand saw a surge in its shares today.

Grant Williamson, Director at Hamilton, Hindin Greene, said, "It was a good performance by the local market considering there were flat performances offshore".

Telecom rose 3c to 224, while Fletcher Building increased 3c to 813, taking the index up.

German stocks registered a fall as Deutsche Post AG posted a fourth-quarter loss and full-year earnings that failed to match estimates and analysts recommended selling Commerzbank AG shares.

DAX Index futures expiring in March plunged by 0.1 percent to 5,866.50 as of 8:13 a. m. in Frankfurt. The benchmark DAX Index closed little changed at 5,875.91 yesterday.

Australian Institute of Petroleum has revealed that petrol prices have touched back on to their pre-price war levels with the national average price of unleaded registering a rise of 3.7 cents to 126 cents a liter in the last week to March 7 - the first rise in three weeks and the biggest weekly rise in over a year.

The New Zealand Dollar remains firmly within the range (US68c and US71.50c) that it managed to travel in last few weeks and it stick to the gains to close unchanged today.

The Kiwi was at US69.91c, by 5pm, unmoved from its level since yesterday. But, early this morning, it was down from a two-week high around US70.35c.

Following the unaltered central rate of parity for Dollar and Yaun China's currency leveled up to U. S. Dollar this afternoon. At around 0930 GMT, the Dollar was at CNY6.8263 for the over-the-counter market and was slightly low than it was on Monday. It operated between CNY6.8262 and CNY6.8267.

Today, the Australian sharemarket managed to rise further, mainly on the back of a sudden hike in job advertisements and data showing that business confidence across the country is now improving.

Official figures have confirmed that the Australian share-market managed to close at its highest level recorded in six long weeks, mainly driven by a materials and energy sector which was much stronger during the latest trading session.

The benchmark stock index of Canada closed on Friday with the best showing for a day in the entire month, and the day saw the index rise by a steady 3 per cent, which is probably the result of the whole week which had a lot of gains.