There is a big upside from the sharp slump in the value of the Australian dollar.
It’s actually more than offset the flop in commodity prices that has been going on since mid-July, and which halted last month for a fortnight or so as the global financial crisis expanded and got really difficult.
The Reserve Bank released its Commodity Price Index for last month and there was a solid rise in Australian dollar terms and even in the so-called Special Drawing Rights (which is a way of expressing currency values equally across all currencies).
The RBA said preliminary estimates showed that in Australian dollar terms, the Index rose by 6.1% in September following an increase of 8.1% (revised) in August.
Preliminary estimates for September indicate that the Index rose by 0.5% (on a monthly average basis) in SDR terms, following an increase of 2.0% (revised) in August.
The largest contributors to the rise in September were increases in the prices of coking coal and thermal coal (reflecting the inclusion of preliminary estimates). The prices of wheat, aluminium, copper and beef fell.
The RBA said last month that the preliminary increases for August were 1% in SDR terms and 7% in August, so there has been a solid upward revision.
It’s a sign that there’s still a little bit of oomph left from the resources boom, although the big test will come from this month as demand starts slowing, especially in China where there are more and more reports about slowing demand from the country’s steel mills for iron ore and coal.
But on these figures, our export performance seems to have survived the volatility of August and September in good shape.
