Australia is only just selling more than it buys
Australia still sold more goods to the rest of the world than it bought, but only just. The gap came in at $1.1bn for the quarter, the smallest since 2017 and well down on the $10.9bn recorded in the same quarter last year, Ottley said. Imports rose 8.1% over the three months while exports rose 4.2%.
Some exports still earned well. Coal was up 19.3% and oil and gas 8.6%, which Ottley linked to higher prices tied to the conflict in the Middle East and more shipments going out. Metal ores and minerals rose 7.6%, on bigger volumes rather than higher prices. Farm exports fell 2.5%.
June went the other way
The monthly figures told a different story. In June alone Australia sold $1.9bn more than it bought, when the market had tipped the opposite. Export values were “much stronger than we expected” at 9.7%, Ottley said, driven by a 60.2% jump in gold exports that reversed a big fall in May.
What it means for the economy
Prices moved around a lot over the quarter, so Ottley also looked at how much actually crossed the border. He estimates the amount of goods going out and coming in both rose by about 2%. On that basis, trade should neither add to nor subtract from economic growth in the June quarter, after dragging it down by 0.8 percentage points in the first three months of the year.
Read Harry Ottley’s full note here.