Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor (Economic) Luci Ellis speaking on infrastructure
- infrastructure investment can involve significant spillover benefits to the rest of the economy....
- the economy benefits from a larger capital stock and the productivity benefits of infrastructure …
- These are often hard to quantify even after the fact, but some examples might include: new export businesses enabled by the construction or expansion of an airport; higher productivity of logistics firms if their vehicles spend less time in traffic; and better health outcomes from reduced accident rates when roads are made safer.
- It is these benefits that are worth focusing on, more than the raw contribution of the building work to GDP growth.
- As I've emphasised on an earlier occasion, it isn't helpful to think of infrastructure as a new 'engine of growth', receiving the handover from the mining investment boom and, later, the apartment building boom
- By its nature, infrastructure is justified by its contribution to the public good. It is not so much an engine of growth as an enabler of growth.
yeah, righto then
AUD not doing too much.
Link to the full text: How Infrastructure Fits In
