There was a small downturn in the Reserve Bank's Index of Commodity Prices in June, continuing a phase that began in March when the value of the Australian dollar started rising.
The Reserve Bank said yesterday that: "Preliminary estimates for June indicate that the Index fell by 1.7 per cent in SDR terms, following a rise of 0.5 per cent (revised) in May.
The bank said that the largest contributors to the fall in June were declines in the prices of nickel, aluminium and zinc.
Wheat and lead prices rose.
"In Australian dollar terms, the Index fell by 4.1 per cent in June following a rise of 0.4 per cent (revised) in May," the Bank said.
But over the financial year,the Australian dollar value of the index fell from 142.9 in June 2006, to 136.5 in June of this year.
That was a fall of 4.4 per cent.
The Australian dollar rose from around 74.30 USc in June 2006 to more than 84 USc last month (and peaked just over 85 cents last Friday), a rise of around 13 per cent.
It peaked at 144.5 in March and has fallen 5.5 per cent since.
In SDR (Special drawing Rights) the index rose 3.6 per cent in the financial year.
The rural component of the index is all but unchanged over the year in Australian dollar terms, the non-rural component fell 6.1 per cent on the same basis but base metals component of the non rural segment was up 15.5 per cent in Australian dollar terms.
But to illustrate the change the base metal component peaked at 242.2 in March, and has fallen 3.9 per cent since.
But the overall index is still at a very high level.
The Australian dollar has risen by around five per cent from the March average of 80.70 USc to around 85 cents in Sydney on Friday.
At the same time the prices of many commodities are up in 2007 but down on a year ago (copper, oil, gold) when a combination of factors set off a super surge in commodity prices from May through August.
The Australian Bureau of Resource and Agricultural Economics last week forecast that unit export returns for Australian mineral and energy commodities would ease by around 1 per cent in 2007-08, following a rise of over 10 per cent in 2006-07.
"While unit returns for energy exports are forecast to remain largely unchanged in 2007-08, unit export returns for metals and other minerals are forecast to fall by around 2 per cent, compared with an increase of 26 per cent in 2006-07.
"Earnings from Australia's commodity exports are forecast to be around $149.5 billion in 2007-08, compared with an estimated $139.7 billion in 2006-07, a rise of 7 per cent.
"The forecast increase in the value of commodity exports reflects higher earnings from both farm and mineral resource exports," ABARE said.
