Debelle foreshadows increased investment

Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Guy Debelle has expressed confidence that there will be an uptick in non-mining investment.

In a speech to the UBS Australasia conference, Dr Debelle said the boom in the services sector and infrastructure was driving the growth in investment.

A lot of this was not being picked up by the official data, he said.

“There have been signs of life in investment spending outside the resources sector,” Dr Debelle said.

“Where has the growth been? The annual national accounts data indicate that much of the growth in business investment in recent years has been in the services sector, including industries such as health, information, media and telecommunications.

“Service industries are not necessarily less capital intensive.”

He said the services sector does not have good coverage in the government’s capital expenditure survey, particularly health and education, as it covers only around half of investment spending in the non-mining sectors

“The other area of investment that has been robust of late has been in those parts of the economy associated with infrastructure spending. There has been a pick-up in growth of public investment in recent years,” he said.

He said a share of these projects have been completed by the private sector on behalf of the public sector.