Yesterday I gave the media a caning for not reporting on some of the more obvious government boosts to GDP in the national accounts. The main culprit was a mysterious asset transfer to government accounts that added 1.1% to Gross Fixed Capital Formation. David Bassanese has the answer this morning:
Meanwhile, while the Australian Bureau of Statistics chose not to report the level of private non-residential construction spending (due to the sale of a desalination plant to the Victorian government for a confidential sum), it did report that total new private business investment rose 1.2 per cent last quarter – down from 4.8 per cent growth in the September quarter. For what it’s worth, that figure suggests the water plant changed hands for a whopping $4.5 billion.
It’s not conclusive but appears possible that the transfer was is a shift from the private to public balance sheet holus bolus. In which case net exports will have been a larger contributor to growth than I gave it credit for yesterday.
If not, then previous quarter’s will have accounted for growth in the project and yesterday’s transfer is effectively a single write down in previous private sector growth, which would juice yesterday’s quarter even if the total is the same.
