As growth surpasses pre-pandemic peaks, Australia joins the exclusive club

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Due to a rebound in business investment and a surge in iron ore exports, the Australian economy has fully recovered from the Covid-19 recession, with an increase of 1.8% in the first three months of 2021 over the previous quarter.

The better-than-expected growth means that the current economy is 0.8% larger than before the coronavirus was first detected in China in December 2019. Promote Australia has become a select group of countries that has continued to grow and develop in the past 15 months.

But economists warned that the slow pace of vaccine rollout in the country and the Covid-19 outbreak in Melbourne have forced Victoria to implement a lockdown, which poses a risk to recovery and will curb economic growth.

Kristian Kolding, an economist at Deloitte Access Economics, said: “Australia is rare here.” “Only five other countries can have larger economies than before the pandemic. We achieved this goal. , While keeping the number of Covids below almost anywhere else.”

The Australian authorities’ successful containment of Covid-19 and stimulus measures boosted business confidence, prompting a 5.3% increase in private investment in the third quarter.

Business investment was driven by machinery and equipment growth of 11.6%, which was the largest increase since the December 2009 quarter. Compared with the previous quarter, housing investment increased by 6.4%.

On an annual basis, the GDP grew by 1.1%.economic growing up Compared with the September quarter, the December quarter was 3.2%.

The surge in commodity prices, especially iron ore prices, has fueled Australia’s recovery, and the terms of trade-a measure of export prices relative to import prices-rose by 7.4% in the first quarter. This pushed the country’s current account surplus in the third quarter to a record 18.3 billion Australian dollars (14.2 billion US dollars).

Canberra’s call for an investigation into China’s origins has triggered trade tensions with China Covid-19 broke out in Wuhan, Failed to curb exports because Beijing could not obtain alternative supplies of steelmaking raw materials.

According to research by Deloitte Access Economics, since the outbreak of Covid-19, only Australia, China, Chile, Romania, South Korea and Lithuania have experienced economic growth. It said that the economies of OECD countries (a group of wealthy countries) are on average 2.7% smaller than before the pandemic.

However, the virus remains a challenge. On Wednesday, the authorities extended a seven-day lockdown on Melbourne to control a cluster, and out of the estimated 40 million jabs required to cover the country’s 25 million people, only 4.4 million were executed.

University of Tasmania researcher Saul Eslake (Saul Eslake) said: “The relative economic performance of countries will depend more than any other factor on the rate at which the population is vaccinated.”

“In this regard, we are far behind the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and even most of continental Europe. Therefore, we can never guarantee that we will maintain a leading position.”

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