Business Outlook

Five-to-ten year forecast for business planners

Successful business planning requires analytical thinking and a detailed understanding of the economic forces shaping the Australian business environment.

Deloitte Access Economics produces a quarterly publication, Business Outlook, delivers Australia’s most sophisticated economic commentary and forecasts on the Australian business environment and economic outlook. Our insights cover a detailed assessment of the Australian national economy, 19 industry sectors, and each of the Australian States and Territories.

It provides facts, figures and forecasts on Australian and world growth prospects, Australian interest rates and exchange rates, wages and prices, exports and imports, jobs and unemployment, taxes and public sector spending.  Our Business Outlook forecasts and analysis reports on the Australian market help commercial businesses and government policy decision makers strengthen and enhance your strategic planning capacity

Armed with this critical guidance, you’ll be better positioned to make informed business, planning decisions and risk assessments, and take advantage of emerging economic trends.

Key Benefits

Expert analysis to help you understand how changes can impact strategic planning and investment decisions for the Australian economic outlook.

• Ten-year detailed forecast data to support detailed financial forecasts in your own business
• Insight into Australian and world economic growth prospects, enabling you to strengthen and enhance risk assessment around key business decisions.

Summary of our Business Outlook September 2024 press release

Supply stumbles

With the worst of the post-pandemic inflationary surge in the rear-view mirror, the Australian economy finds itself struggling under the burden of deepening structural challenges that threaten to further erodeliving standards unless urgently addressed.

At the start of this calendar year, Deloitte Access Economics noted that ‘by the end of 2024, the primary economic challenge for the country will not be lowering the rate of inflation, it will be lifting the rate of growth’, and that this will be the year that ‘Australia reverts back to the economy seen in the years before the pandemic’. As Christmas rapidly approaches, those sentiments ring true.

Releasing the September 2024 edition of the flagship Business Outlook report, Deloitte Access Economics Partner and report co-author, Cathryn Lee, “It is easy to forget how the Australian economy was tracking prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The summary, in simple terms: not well.

“Economic growth for the 2019 calendar year was a miserly 1.8% – at the time, the slowest rate of growth in any calendar year since 1991 – while late in the year the Reserve Bank cut the cash rate to just 0.75%.

“Almost five years on, and for all the disruption caused by the pandemic, a lot feels the same. Most notably, the important, structural challenges facing the Australian economy remain.”

“These structural challenges largely exist on the supply-side of the economy, which consists of three key drivers: population, participation, and productivity. Right now, all three are in focus.”

Deloitte Access Economics Partner and report lead author, Stephen Smith said: “The RBA is of the view that the level of demand in Australia is too high relative to supply, and that this is putting upward pressure on prices. That is debateable given that an economy’s supply capacity can only be estimated, not observed. For example, estimates from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development suggest not only that demand is lagging supply ,but that the gap is widening.

“Even if it is the case that the level of demand in Australia is too high relative to supply, surely the solution is to lift supply through improved productivity, not to crush demand with higher interest rates.

Read the full press report release - September 2024

Pricing

Annual Subscription (4 reports)

• Business Outlook Report with Data Files - $3,499 Buy
• Business Outlook Report Only - $2,499 Buy

One-off purchase - (Access to the latest release only)

• Business Outlook Report with Data Files - $1,749 Buy
• Business Outlook Report Only - $1,249 Buy

For further information (publications):
T: +61 3 9667 5070
E: daesubscriptions@deloitte.com.au

Sign up to the free Weekly Economic Briefing newsletter.