Every now and then you have a week when things seem to go right – your baby son suddenly begins sleeping soundly and copiously, you get the perfect park at work – twice! – and your bank gets in touch to say it has made a $100 mistake in your favour, and lets you keep it (ok, so that last one never happens, it is just a dream).
The Reserve Bank of Australia has just had such a week.
When the RBA Board sits down tomorrow for its monthly monetary policy meeting, it will see little reason to move the official cash rate.
All the signs are that the economy is behaving in ways that it has anticipated, and that are broadly in keeping with its monetary policy stance.
Low interest rates appear to be working to encourage activity in non-mining parts of the economy, particularly housing, while the dollar is depreciating and worrying price pressures are yet to appear.
Though there was a slip in building approvals last month (down 1.8 per cent), much of this was due to the volatile apartments segment of the market, and annual growth remains a healthy 23.1 per cent.
Of course, holding interest rates at historically low levels for an extended period carries with it risk, and some have started to fret that a bubble in the housing market, particularly in Sydney, is developing.
But the overblown talk of an over-heating property market, never well-founded, looks increasingly silly. Sure, house prices have surged in the major cities – most notably Sydney and Melbourne – but there are at least three good reasons to dismiss talk of a bubble at this stage. Firstly, there are signs that the market in established housing is losing some of its heat and price growth is easing. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, credit growth remains modest – borrowing for housing grew by 0.5 per cent in each of September and October to be up 5 per cent from a year earlier, which is hardly what could be described as “bubble-like”. Thirdly, the nation’s population is growing at a solid rate of around 1.8 per cent, and the easing dollar makes Australian property an increasingly attractive proposition for foreign investors.
There are also encouraging signs that manufacturers and other businesses are starting to pick up the pace of their investment – a development that is coming none too soon, given the rapid deceleration in mining investment.
Official figures show that in the September quarter, mining companies cut their spending on plant and equipment by 7.1 per cent (while expenditure on buildings and structures increased 5.6 per cent). In the same period, manufacturers spent an extra 3 per cent on plant and equipment, and increased funds for buildings by 1.5 per cent.
Any investment plans should be well supported by healthy balance sheets. The Australian Bureau of Statistics confirmed today that business profits grew almost 4 per cent in the September quarter and are up almost 9 per cent in the past year. In the same period, wages have grown 3.1 per cent.
While GDP figures out on Wednesday are likely to show the economy was just ticking over in the September quarter, evidence that non-mining activity is building should push consideration of more rate cuts further into the background.
Instead, the RBA Board may soon begin to consider the timing of a rate hike.
Though it is unlikely to make such a move tomorrow, the central bank will be heartened by the dollar’s slide in recent days. Governor Glenn Stevens made it clear again last week that he thought its sustained strength against the greenback has been increasingly difficult to justify.
Inflation and wages appear well contained for now, but the longer the cash rate is kept at 2.5 per cent, the greater the risk prices could accelerate, which would in turn increase pressure for wage hikes.
As ever for a central bank, the trick is in the timing. Push up rates too soon or too fast, and the dollar could rebound, but leave them low for too long and potentially destabilising price pressures could accumulate.
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