Sydney: Australia's economy will likely
perform under capacity and unemployment will rise, despite the
country's resilience in the face of the global downturn,
Treasurer Wayne Swan said on Monday.
Swan said the government's USD 63.18 billion emergency
stimulus package had helped keep Australia out of a recession
- the only major Western nation to do so - but that
uncertainties remained.
"We still expect the economy will operate below capacity
for a while yet and for the unemployment rate to continue to
rise," he told economists at a lunch in Sydney.
"The full effects of the fall in Australia's terms of
trade are also still being felt, and this will continue to
weigh on domestic incomes. Private business investment and
company profitability are still expected to decline."
Australia posted growth of 0.6 percent in the three
months to June - the best in the developed world - while the
country's jobless rate fell unexpectedly for the first time in
five months in September to 5.7 percent.
But Swan, who did not put a figure on future
unemployment, said without the government's fiscal stimulus
the economy would have contracted by 1.3 percent over the
year to June.
The treasurer said one year after the global financial
crisis rattled markets around the world, a sustained global
recovery was "no sure thing."
Bureau Report
First Published: Monday, October 12, 2009, 14:16