Turns out the mining boom was even bigger than we thought

Via Westpac:

• The Annual National Accounts for financial year 2015/16 included revised estimates for business investment. Here we provide a brief recap of recent trends.

• In terms of the mining / non-mining investment picture there are a couple of key take outs.

• The mining investment boom has been revised higher. It appears that some investment previously allocated to other industries has been reclassified.

• Non-mining business investment has a more pronounced cycle over recent years.

Mining investment: The timing of the peak in mining investment remains 2012/13. In nominal dollar terms, mining investment climbed to a high of $137bn, upgraded by almost $23bn from the 2014/15 annual national accounts. As a share of the economy, mining investment peaked at 9.0% in 2012/13, upgraded from 7.5% – a rather sizeable revision. For the 2015/16 financial year as a whole, mining investment moderated to 4.6% of GDP. The end of the mining investment boom is in sight. Work on the remaining gas projects under construction is due to be progressively completed during 2017.

Services investment: Investment by the service sectors (covering 15 industry groupings) has been marked down in recent years. The largest downgrade, of over $14bn, is in 2012/13. Service sector investment now has a more pronounced recovery. In the two years to 2014/15 nominal growth is 5% and 11%, upgraded from 3% and 5%. However, the recovery lost momentum in 2015/16, a rise of only 2%. The strong result for 2014/15 occurred as the housing boom had a head of steam and as the Australian dollar fell sharply, to be at more competitive levels.

And the lesson? If you want to grow post-mining boom get the dollar down.