Getting inside the thinking of Australia’s exporters
Australia’s International Business Survey 2019 provides new insights into
what Australia’s exporters are thinking, which markets are appealing, and
signals trade tensions are beginning to dent confidence.
The survey is run by the Export Council of Australia, and sponsored by
Austrade and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Behind the scenes, it’s
been great to work with a peak body and a bank – Austrade is better
positioned than most government agencies to collaborate with the private
sector and in this case it worked really well. The Export Council of
Australia ran the survey and wrote up the full survey report, while
Austrade and CBA pooled their economic analysts to sift through the results
and combine the most interesting parts into a highlights report. We all
pulled together to organise the launch event, on 29 October 2019.
We surveyed around 600 businesses this year. Australia’s International
Business Survey isn’t of the scale of a national survey, but its insights
are no less valuable. Understanding how current and potential Austrade
clients view the trade landscape helps us better support Australian
businesses. And the richness in the survey questions allows us to really
understand what businesses are thinking.
It was great to see businesses are still intending to push into new
markets, and that businesses whose top international markets include the
U.S. have the most positive outlook. Around 66 per cent of businesses
focused on the U.S. expect a better financial outlook over the next two
years, and only 4 per cent expect a worse outlook.
Businesses whose top international markets include China are less
optimistic than last year. Just half of those firms expect a better
financial outlook, compared to two-thirds last year. But of all
destinations where businesses plan to expand, China is the most popular
country, at 20 per cent of all responses. This makes sense given our strong
trading ties with China, and its extremely positive economic growth
rates.
The survey shows 55 per cent of businesses view their financial outlook for
the next two years as being better than the previous two years. This result
surprised us - particularly given the trade tensions and slowing economic
growth, so we decided to dig deeper. It turns out there was an 11
percentage points fall from last year, when 66 per cent of surveyed
businesses were expecting a better outlook. In context this made a lot
more sense, and was a good reminder that time series data is always worth
looking at.
It’s great to take the pulse of Australian exporters and this data is a
rich set of research to better understand how they are thinking. We plan to
dig even further into the analysis in coming weeks, so stay turned for more
blog posts on this topic.