A solid showing still for conditions but the more sentiment-driven confidence measure is still negative, albeit a little better than February.
Sub indexes:
- sales +1 to a very high +26
- employment -2 points to +10
- profitability -1 to +13
- price pressures eased, growth in purchase costs eased to 1.8%, compared with 3.0% in February
- overall price growth 1.2% (from 1.6% in February)
- retail sector inflation 1.6% (from 2% in February)
NAB comments:
- Business conditions have been resilient, slowly edging lower over the past few months but remaining well above their long-run average
- the survey suggests the economy is still holding up and indicates there has been some easing in inflation, although there is still a long way to go to bring inflation back down to the RBA's target band and growth could be more volatile from there
