Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The resources sector has proven to be resilient during the Covid-19 pandemic, bucking the trend to deliver positive growth in the June quarter, new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has shown.
The ABS this week revealed that Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) had fallen by 7% in the June quarter, the largest quarterly fall on record, following a fall of 0.3% in the March quarter.
The ABS said that the combined effect of the pandemic and the community and government responses to it led to movements of unprecedented size, not only in GDP but also in many of the other economic aggregates in the June quarter National Accounts.
“The global pandemic and associated containment policies led to a 7% fall in GDP for the June quarter. This is, by a wide margin, the largest fall in quarterly GDP since records began in 1959,” said head of National Accounts at the ABS Michael Smedes.
Federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt noted that the mining industry had bucked the national trend to see a 0.2% increase in output during the June quarter, which is also a 1.1% rise on the same period last year.
“Encouragingly, mining investment also rose by 1.3% on the previous quarter, and was up by almost 8% on the previous year, which is a good indication of the confidence in the Australian resources sector, despite the impact of Covid-19.
“It continues to directly employ over 200 000 Australians and supports the jobs of well over a million others.
“While it is devastating to see the nationwide job losses caused by the impact of the coronavirus, we will get to the other side of this crisis and resources is well-placed to help lead our economic recovery.
“It will be all about job creation as we emerge from the pandemic and mining will be in a good position to do just that, particularly for regional Australia,” Pitt said.
“The extra measures the resources industry have taken to keep workers and communities safe and healthy is paying dividends for Australia now, and will pay even greater dividends when we reach the other side of the Covid-19 pandemic.”