Lead Story

Issue No. 28 - April/May 2006

Not quite up to speed, are we?

by Professor Richard Blandy

The most recent data show South Australia data not quite level-pegging with the country as a whole.

On the most recent (trend, constant prices) national accounts figures to the 12 months ended September 2005:

• Australian domestic final demand grew 3.8%, while SA’s state final demand grew 3.4%;
• Australian private gross fixed capital investment grew 8.5% to SA’s 6.6%;
• Australian total consumption grew 2.7% to SA’s 2.2%;
• Australian exports grew 2.2% to SA’s 3.9%.

South Australia has been strongly outperforming New South Wales and Victoria on nearly all economic indicators, however, as can be seen in Table 1, below left.

Table 1: Indicators of Economic Performance, South Australia, Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, annual percentage changes for latest data. Source: ABS, Ausstats, various catalogue numbers.