March 15, 2019

NAB’s World on Two Pages: March 2019

The bigger picture – A global and Australian economic perspective.

Economic trends globally have generally softened – growth in major advanced and emerging market economies slowed in Q4, and more timely indicators point to further slowing early in 2019. The slowdown in growth goes beyond trade issues, with weak domestic demand in a range of countries.

This broad based deterioration suggests that the any economic benefits derived from a cooling in US-China trade tensions should not be overstated.

Financial markets have continued to recover, partly on the back of more dovish monetary policy expectations.

Given the recent negative trends, we have revised our growth forecasts lower for 2019 to a sub-trend 3.4%. Our leading indicator implies further weakness through to the middle of 2019, and suggests the risk to our forecasts is on the downside. That said we expect growth to stabilise into 2020 – in part due to the dovish turn in policy settings.

Find out more in NAB’s world on two pages: March 2019