Treasurer Hopes to Lift Australia’s Productivity With $900 Million Fund

Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has announced a new $900 million fund aimed at improving the country’s productivity, including infrastructure building. Australia sits in the middle of OECD countries for productivity: behind the Nordic states, France, and the United States, but ahead of the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, and the OECD average. Over the decade to 2020—before the pandemic and under the former Coalition government—productivity growth was the slowest in 60 years, averaging just 1.1 percent a year. Under Labor it marginally improved, but it’s already started to slip. In 2022, Treasury downgraded its long-term growth forecast from 1.5 to 1.2 percent a year....