Hunter economic update Oct 2010

Speaker's Presentations + publication available free to download

Thursday, 21 October 2010
MEDIA RELEASE
Sent by: Jane Hanlon, Marketing Coordinator

The implications of managing regional economic growth

The regional economy has been a picture of strength of late, with strong employment, strong investment, rising household consumption and buoyant dwelling investment, according to the Hunter Valley Research Foundation’s latest Hunter Region Economic Indicators.

But Principal Research Fellow Simon Deeming foresees two major challenges to a strong economic outlook.  “For some sectors, the withdrawal of the fiscal stimulus is not being sufficiently replaced by private sector activity.  For others, the exceptional terms of trade context, which is shaping the currency and interest rate context, will act to constrain their growth”.

“It is really a story of managing current and potential economic growth within the Region’s capital and labour resources, with the latter already showing signs of stress.  The work will be done either by higher interest rates or to some extent, by a higher Australian dollar.  For the Hunter economy, this effectively implies constraint in some sectors, particularly the debt-exposed and the non-commodity export focused, to enable the expansion of others.”

Hear Simon present the full results from the September quarter Hunter Region Economic Indicators at the HVRF’s breakfast tomorrow morning.

ENDS