Current Economic Performance of Australia: An Analysis

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ECONOMICS ASSIGNMENT

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
The current state of the Australian economy.............................................................................3
GDP growth rate of Australia....................................................................................................3
Unemployment rate....................................................................................................................4
The inflation rate of 5
Terms of trade............................................................................................................................5
Current account..........................................................................................................................6
Net foreign debt..........................................................................................................................7
Value of Australian dollar..........................................................................................................8
Three issues facing the economy in the next 12 months............................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
Reference..................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
One of the major responsibilities of the government is to monitor the economic performances
and regulate some of the indicators for the betterment of the economy. The economic
indicators help the government and economists to understand the health and the performance
of the economy. The objective of this paper is to discuss the current economic performance of
Australia compared to the performance in the previous years since 2015. The paper uses
secondary data from the World Bank for data analysis. The paper also states the issues that
the economy may face in the next 12 months.
Discussion
The current state of the Australian economy
GDP growth rate of Australia
GDP growth rate is an indicator of an economy that measures the changes in the national
GDP based on the GDP of the previous year. Understanding of the GDP growth rate allows
the reader to read the health of the economy.
Figure 1: Annual
GDP growth rate of
Australia
(Source:
Tradingeconomics.com, 2019)
The economic growth rate in Australia is higher than any other developed nations of the
world. However, the data for the year 2019 shows a drastic fall in the GDP growth rate of the
country. However, one of the positive points to note here is the slight increase in the GDP
growth rate in the august month of the same year. Australia is among the very few economies
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Aug-19
2.34
2.85
2.34
2.83
0.28
0.8
Annual GDP growth rate
Annual GDP growth rate

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of the world which was not affected much by the global financial crisis of 2007 (ABC News,
2019). Before 2018, the economic growth rate of Australia was high; however, due to the
recent changes in the global economy, the economic output of Australia has reduced. The
government of Australia can still correct the performance of the Australian economy with the
changes in the money supply and the interest rates in the coming years (Wilson et al. 2018).
However, at this moment the performance of the economy is going out of the desired path.
Unemployment rate
The unemployment rate is one of the important indicators of the health of an economy. It is
the ratio of the total people unemployed in the economy to the total size of the labour force.
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Aug-19
6.05
5.71
5.59 5.6
5.13
5.4
Unemployment rate
Unemployment rate
Figure 2: The annual unemployment rate of Australia
(Source: Tradingeconomics.com, 2019)
The current unemployment rate of Australia is against the overall target set by the
government 5 years back. The trend of the economy that started in 2015 is now disrupted and
failing to achieve the overall goal of the government and the central bank of Australia. The