Pat Bustamante

Jan 21, 2025 | westpac.com.au | James Thornhill |Flora C.Y. Lee |Josh Wall |Pat Bustamante

From Coffs Harbour to Bendigo, Australia’s regions are seeing strong growth in business credit despite the prevailing economic headwinds, underlining their attraction as places to live and work. Westpac’s lending to businesses in regional areas has increased 12.4 per cent over the past two years, outpacing growth of 11.3 per cent in metro areas, according to the bank’s lending data.

Sep 17, 2024 | westpac.com.au | Liam Cormican |Carolyn A. McCann |Marina Gainulina |Pat Bustamante

At their Rocklea operation, old cars, appliances and construction materials are piled in a tower five stories high, while an electric crane (one of only two in Australia) picks up the materials and feeds them into a giant shredder that spits out chunks of metal ready to be put in shipping containers and sent to Southeast Asia. From there the metal will be reprocessed and made into new products by companies such as BlueScope Steel.

Aug 26, 2024 | westpac.com.au | James Thornhill |Josh Wall |Thomas Corwin Evans |Pat Bustamante

This is a great thing for a growing economy like Australia. The resurgence in population growth after Australia’s international borders reopened means we need to invest in capital items such as infrastructure, commercial floorspace, IT systems, machines and emerging technologies. This investment will help boost productivity and support real income growth over the long term.

Oct 10, 2023 | westpac.com.au | Josh Wall |James Thornhill |Matthew Hassan |Pat Bustamante

Consumers are becoming more wary about the potential for further interest rises. Over 60 per cent of those surveyed after the RBA’s October rate decision expect rates to move higher over the next 12 months, compared to under 50 per cent after the September meeting. That’s undoubtedly being driven by inflation concerns, with August CPI nudging back above 5 per cent on an annual basis.

Oct 4, 2023 | westpac.com.au | Josh Wall |James Thornhill |Pat Bustamante |Matthew Hassan

The Reserve Bank Board left the cash rate unchanged at 4.10 per cent at its October meeting, as expected, in Michele Bullock’s first meeting as governor. The decision statement was largely unchanged from September and it’s perhaps more instructive to consider what was not included. There was no sound of alarm around inflation data for August, which came in on the high side.