So, private capex is out and kapow! Yes, it’s an extravaganza of investment with the March quarter delivering 6.1% growth against consensus of 4%. Year on year it is up 28.3%.
That’s all to the good, but I was more interested to see if capex projections had at all been reigned in in the March QTR following China’s slow down but nup!
Here’s the total:
These groovy charts show the projected (clear) and actual (shaded) capex. As you can see, the projection for Q213 is still big, really big! And it is all, you guessed it, mining:
Versus a manufacturing base that has pretty much thrown in the towel, planning investment at levels first achieved some six years ago.
Other industries are plumbing levels back in time that I dare not even canvass:
It’s all the way with DIRT!
More seriously, though, if you ignore the rampant Dutch disease, this is a very solid release given the external environment. I’m not surprised the dollar got .3 of a cent lift out of it. The one proviso I’ll add is that the first quarter was before the recent China slowdown consensus emerged. So, next quarter could be the release to watch for any peaking.
Update: Westpac notes that there has, in fact, been a slight ratcheting back in implied projected capex:
We calculate that the plans imply CAPEX growth of 23% for 2012/13, scaled back from 25% implied by the survey 3 months ago.
So we may indeed be approaching the peak.
