Growing demand for mineral and energy will fuel increased commodity export volumes and prices next year, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics has predicted.
ABARE forecasts the value of Australia’s commodity exports will lift 40% to more than $212 billion in 2008-09, with iron ore, coal, crude oil, gold and aluminium exports to be particularly strong.
The prediction, an upgrade from the 30% forecast in March, reflects continuing strong demand for resources from developing economies such as China and India.
The big news on the markets today is the announcement by British gas producer BG Group that it will attempt a hostile takeover of Australian gas business Origin Energy.
The announcement has helped Origin’s share price – up 5.67% today by 12.25pm to $16.40. It has so far done little to boost a flagging market, with the S&P/ASX200 down 0.7% on yesterday’s close to 5249.2.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COMMENTS
SmartCompany is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while it is being reviewed, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.