Export
Issue No. 23 - June/Nuly 2005
SA’s world [markets]
by Professor Richard Blandy
Over the 14 years from June 1990 to June 2004 (latest data, see Chart 1, below), exports from South Australia grew at nearly twice the rate of South Australia’s Gross State Product. Exports grew by 250% while GSP grew by 140%. As a result, the share of exports in South Australia’s GSP rose from 10% in 1990 to reach 20% in 2002, before retreating over the next two years to 18%. As can be seen in Chart 1, this slow down has simply matched the national slowdown.
South Australia’s exports as a share of SA’s GSP have now caught up with the share of national exports in Australia’s GDP. This is a remarkable result and shows that South Australia’s economy has now reached the level of international competitiveness of the Australian economy generally. It has been a long struggle for South Australia to shake off the internationally uncompetitive costs that were SA’s legacy from 100 years of Australian protectionism (under which South Australia was the principal State beneficiary).
As remarkable, in Chart 1, is the very slow growth in South Australia’s imports compared with the growth in Australia’s imports, as a whole. Particularly in the last few years, while Australia has developed a large and expanding balance of payments deficit with the rest of the world, South Australia has developed a growing balance of payments surplus. This result casts further doubt on the slow growth in South Australia’s Gross State Product that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has often estimated over the past 15 years. The ABS has argued that growth in South Australia’s Gross State Product is much less than the rapid growth in South Australia’s State Demand because SA has a worsening balance of payments with the rest of the world (including the rest of Australia). Chart 1 shows that this is not true so far as the SA’s balance of payments with the rest of the world (outside of Australia) is concerned.
The very ...
