Anurag Bhullar

The Australian economy is considered to be a strong economy as it has experienced various positive reforms over the last two decades that have boosted its economy and shown a tremendous improvement and economic growth. This open, dynamic, competitive and flexible economy is a western style market economy that is dominated by the service sector. The Australian economy has an average annual GDP growth rate of around 3.6 percent (in the years, 1998 to 2005) which was quite more than that of the other developed economies.

Australia is rich in natural resources and is a major exporter of the agricultural products including wheat, wool, coal, bauxite, gold, silver, uranium, copper, tin, tungsten, mineral sands, lead, grain, meat, zinc, opals, diamonds and food products. Its largest export markets are Japan, US, China, New Zealand and South Korea while the import markets are US, China, Japan, Singapore, and Germany.

After the recession period in the 1980s, the Australian economy has enjoyed almost 16 years of uninterrupted growth along with growing demand for commodities. Apart from the service sector the agricultural and mining sectors also constitute a major part of the economy. Though these sectors are comparatively small but they together contribute 4.7% of GDP, and approximately 65 percent of the exports. In addition to all the above mentioned sectors the manufacturing sector is another significant sector of the Australian economy. Even after facing instability in the recent times, the sector has vastly recovered in the year 2007 and contributed around 10 percent to the GDP of the economy.