Business confidence is at record high levels in North and North-West Tasmania, a new survey shows.
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The Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s business expectations survey shows that confidence is the highest in the North with 72 per cent compared to the South with 69 per cent and North-West 59 per cent.
TCCI chief executive Michael Bailey said the survey was done after the March state election and reflected businesses being “comfortable” with the election result.
“I have never seen confidence levels this high,” Mr Bailey said.
“We very proudly show the rest of the country that our business confidence is the strongest in the nation.
“Importantly what we’re seeing is the economy growing strongly in the North and North-West.
“We’re seeing businesses doing better than they have done before, we’re seeing construction growing, we’re seeing the return of forestry which is very important to those communities and agricultural exports still very strong.”
Mr Bailey said in previous surveys there had been a lack of confidence, particularly in Launceston and the North-East.
He attributed northern businesses having the most confidence to the university relocating to the city, Errol Stewart’s silos development and the CH Smith building redevelopment
“The North and North-West has been our focus for many years now and we’re particularly impressed with the growth in Launceston and the North-East which is an area which hasn’t been as resilient as the North-West,” he said.
“Who would have thought we would have Derby, one of the most famous towns in the world for mountain biking?”
“The North-West has been very resilient over the past few years despite Caterpillar moving to a different country, the glitch in the dairy industry which all impacted the North-West.
“But what was amazing was that that market stayed really quite resilient through those changes. Latrobe now has over 120 building blocks taking place in that little community.”
The survey showed businesses had greater confidence in the Tasmanian economy than the national economy.
Mr Bailey said he believed that was because Tasmanian exports were doing well and businesses felt they were in charge of their own destiny regardless of what happened nationally.
“It really is a perfect storm of good news for businesses,” he said.
“It is a unique time in our state and what we need to do is maintain the pressure to keep businesses continuing to grow, continuing to invest and continue to employ more people.”
Mr Bailey said Tasmania still needed to work on better education and health outcomes and address our growing ageing population.
He said the state also should look beyond China for new export markets and try to get our products into the growing Sydney and Melbourne markets.