Page 3550 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 23 November 2021
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bookings and bookings through online restaurant booking services, demonstrates increases in terms of credit card spend of 20 per cent above 2019 levels—the equivalent pre-pandemic year. Then what we are seeing across the hospitality sector is that the number of booked seats at restaurants is up by over 100 per cent. These are showing a very strong recovery as we move through the different stages of restriction easing. That is encouraging but of course we want to see that sustained.
The objective would be to get back towards the $80 million a month, or around $2½ million a day being spent across the food industry, effectively cafes, restaurants and takeaways. That is where we were before the lockdown and that is where we would like to get back to. We will have data on that in the monthly retail trade figures for November-December, which we will not see until late January and February next year. But the early lead indicators are very encouraging.
We have good data coming out of the ABS in relation to our real gross state product. Let us go through it. Our real GSP increased by 2.8 per cent. The Australian economy, Australia’s gross domestic products, increased by 1.5 per cent. So the growth rate in the ACT was nearly double the national average. It was driven by a broad base of increased economic output: public administration and safety, not surprisingly; professional, scientific and technical services. This was largely driven by rises in computer software contracts supporting Australian government operations, particularly cyber security contracts to improve network security for employees working from home—an ongoing trend in terms of how we work.
Healthcare and social assistance grew very strongly. This was partly driven by COVID testing and vaccine services in the latter half of the fiscal year but does represent a long-term increase in healthcare and social assistance as a share of the territory economy.
Private sector activity contributed to the ACT’s GSP growth, with retail trade and wholesale trade being the main contributors. Growth in retail trade reflected increased sales in motor vehicles due to higher household disposable income. Online shopping rose considerably, again not surprisingly, for reasons associated with both an ongoing trend year on year and then clearly, for several months, restrictions on bricks and mortar retail trade due to lockdown. Wholesale trade increases reflected strong motor vehicle demand from businesses. Machinery and equipment wholesaling, grocery and liquor wholesaling also contributed to growth. Part of that is business-to-business sales but particularly reflected are the strongest six months ever in the history of record-keeping for restaurants, cafes and takeaways pre-lockdown.
State final demand rose by 3.1 per cent. That was driven by an increase in household consumption of 3.4 per cent. Public consumption, that of the ACT and commonwealth governments, was up by 4.8 per cent. When we delved deeper into the comparisons with other jurisdictions, we saw our growth rate in terms of real GSP being effectively double that of New South Wales. New South Wales grew by 1.4 per cent; we grew by 2.8 per cent.
Our real GSP per capita growth was two per cent—that is, adjusting for population, adjusting for inflation. On per capita GSP, gross state product, the output from our
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