Michael Ferguson,Minister for Finance
In a win for Tasmanian business, our state has topped the nation in retail trade growth in January, with an increase of 0.7 per cent in trend terms – the highest growth in Australia.
Retail trade hit a new record of $580.7 million for the month, and over the year to January 2020, it grew 6.7 per cent. That is again the highest growth rate in the nation, and nearly three times higher than the growth seen nationally.
This is in spite of alternative Labor leader David O'Byrne's repeated attempts to talk down businesses and damage confidence.
Mr O'Byrne can continue to talk Tasmania down, but these figures speak for themselves and Tasmanians will not be fooled. Maybe his doom and gloom should be reserved for reminiscing about the bad old days when Mr O'Byrne was firing police and shutting down the forest industry in the Labor-Green accord.
Despite these excellent results, we know economic headwinds remain and Tasmania is not immune to the economic impacts of bushfires and coronavirus that we're seeing on the mainland and around the world.
The Tasmanian majority Liberal Government is investing in the infrastructure our growing state needs with our $3.7 billion infrastructure program to maintain the strong economic momentum and create a further 10,000 jobs across the next four years.
