Balance of payments is out and, whoa, are we leveraging up fast. From the ABS:
- The current account deficit, seasonally adjusted, increased $2,258m (12%) to $21,106m in the December quarter of 2015. The deficit on the balance of goods and services increased $2,592m (35%) to $9,929m. The primary income deficit decreased $331m (3%) to $10,564m.
- In seasonally adjusted chain volume terms, the surplus on goods and services increased $19m from $8,491m in the September quarter 2015 to $8,510m in the December quarter 2015. This is expected to contribute 0.0 percentage points to growth in the December quarter 2015 volume measure of GDP.
That’s zero contribution from net exports to GDP for Q4. A red number is odds on for tomorrow’s GDP now. But back to more important matters, the CAD is hovering at record levels in dollar terms:
Assuming little growth tomorrow in the national accounts, that’ll be another quarter above -5% CAD to GDP:
And an annual rate fast catching up at -4.5%:
Net foreign debt hit another new record above one trillion dollars with a parabolic trend:
It was supposed to be so different as the third phase of the mining boom delivered endless income, volume growth and a current account surplus. Instead, we are borrowing like mad to keep ourselves in the manner to which we have become accustomed.
