Global agencies give Australia’s economy thumbs up

As Alan Austin reports, Australia is forging ahead as job losses, inflation and weak growth impact many economies.

Among the latest global institutions to praise the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and chief accountant Jim Chalmers International Monetary Fund (IMF), Knight Frank and Standard & Poor’s (S&P).

International property consultants Knight Frank announce its 20th annual fortune report He singled out Australia for special mention last Thursday. After years of slow growth in wealth and income, well-being is now growing steadily.

Increase in personal wealth

The number of Australians with wealth above $30 million is expected to rise by almost 60% over the next five years, reaching a total of 26,095, or almost one in 1,000 people.

Australia’s increasing prosperity, according to Knight Frank:

‘…reflects more than rising asset prices. ‘This speaks to a broad-based, resilient economy based on agriculture and mining, and increasingly supported by finance, business services and a rapidly maturing technology sector.’

These engines have created a depth of wealth that now outpaces most comparable economies, with the billionaire population predicted to grow by a staggering 77% between 2026 and 2031. This increase in billionaires, if realized, would make them the fourth highest ranked billionaire in the world. The top three are Saudi Arabia, Poland and Sweden.

The report concludes:

‘In a world where wealth is becoming more mobile, Australia stands out for the diversity and resilience of its wealth creation story.’

Of course, what is important in creating wealth is the distribution of this generosity across all percentiles. Knight Frank offers no data on this subject, but annual UBS Global Wealth Report to do. We are looking forward to this with interest since it is mid-year.

The increase in city house prices is moderate

A valuable part of Knight Frank’s report is the annual PIRI 100 (the most important international housing index), which ranks the world’s wealthiest cities by the rate of growth in property values.

Last week’s update showed Sydney falling arrangement 30th in the world in 2018 and 78th in 2026. This doesn’t mean that values ​​are falling, it just means that the rate of increase is slowing down. This is very encouraging.

Brisbane dropped from 31st to 54th. Melbourne fell from 41st to 84th, while the Gold Coast fell from 42nd to 48th. Perth, on the contrary, rose from 42nd to 37th place.

IMF confirms Australia’s superiority

Treasurer Chalmers was keen to highlight positive data from this month’s biennial Financial Monitor From the International Monetary Fund. It may well do so, given most Australian newsrooms’ refusal to cover anything that would undermine consumer and business trust.

-headed ‘Australia is now in the top three in G20 budget rankings’Sayman’s media statement requested IMF shows Australia ‘It has risen from 14th in previous years in global rankings for best budget management to have one of the three strongest budget balances in the G20.’.

A note on country comparisons

These observations are accurate and quite valid, given that Australia is a member of the EU. G20. This contrasts with previous ill-fated Coalition governments that made deceptive comparisons with the United States. G7A country of which Australia is not a member.

But this column prefers OECD members for comparisons; because these are 38 developed countries with mixed capitalist economies and mostly liberal democracies. The G20 is a smaller group that includes developing countries Indonesia, India and South Africa, and single-party countries Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. We will also focus on historical and current results rather than speculative predictions.

However, by any grouping, the results today are much more positive than at any time since 2000. Rudd/gillard years.

Key IMF findings for 2026

Financial Monitor‘s master list includes 30 advanced OECD members for whom comparisons are instructive. Developing countries for which reliable data have not been available since the Trump Administration are Costa Rica, Colombia and others, and the United States is excluded. changed professional statisticians with lackeys.

Australia’s GDP growth is expected to be 2% this year, ranking seventh out of 30 economies. This was 21st in 2019 and 22nd in 2021.

In general budget balance, Australia ranked 13th, rising from 30th to last in 2019!

This was achieved through stronger government revenues and controlled spending. Australia’s spending is 39.1% of GDP, well below the OECD average of 45.4%, undermining fake newsroom claims that Labor is a wasteful administration.

This year’s ranking ranks fifth in this group of 30, up from ninth in 2019. See the table below.

Australia’s share of GDP rose from 14th to 12th in this group from 2020 to 2022, ahead of New Zealand and South Korea.

Credit score news

A positive signal came from Australia’s composite purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rating agency S&P jumped From 46.6 in March to 50.1 in April. PMI measures the performance of the private sector each month by combining data from both the manufacturing and services sectors.

Accordingly Trade EconomicsExport orders continued to grow, but only modestly, driven by sales to North America, Asia and New Zealand. Accelerating employment growth allowed companies to reduce the backlog.

Relentless negative press

Meanwhile, mainstream newsrooms continue to ignore most of the positive results. Recent alarming headlines, many of which are highly misleading, include:

This is Australia. Rich in talent, enterprise, capital, resources, property and general wealth. Extremely weak in news and data analysis.

Alan Austin is an Independent Australian columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @alanaustin001 and Bluesky @alanaustin.bsky.social.

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