Deloitte give Australian agribusiness and wealth management the thumbs up – and ICT is fighting !
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Deloitte Australia have released their Positioning for Prosperity report this week and Deloitte identifies five “super-growth industry sectors” that they forecast will collectively contribute an additional $250 billion to the Australian economy over the next 20 years. These five industries would form the backbone of a powerful new diversified Australian economy no longer reliant on the resources sector.
The “super-growth” industries identified by Deloitte are
- Agribusiness,
- Gas,
- Tourism,
- International Education, and
- Wealth Management.
The Deloitte report paints a genuinely optimistic picture for the Australian economy for the next 20 years, an economy diversified beyond its current reliance on the resources sector. And it paints a particularly optimistic future for Australia’s ability to capitalise on the next phase of economic growth in Asia, where some three billion more people will join the middle class by the middle of the century
The Deloitte report puts forward an interesting and defensible argument about the growth markets of the next 20 years.
But for the ICT sector – or more specifically the tech start-up sector – Deloitte see the technology industry as a lack lustre sector.
The ICT industry is positioned in the low-growth, low-comparable advantage, small-opportunity portion of its explanatory graphic – yet to maintain perspective ICT is identified as one of 14 sectors important to continued prosperity of Australia.
The business community have opined that ICT is a low-growth, small-opportunity sector in Australia .
Analysts and commentators have stated such as “the ICT sector interests in Australia are badly organised and disenfranchised, fragmented and poorly articulated, hamstrung by the puffed-up self-importance of its leadership and drowning in the self-interest of its calls to action.”
It is a wake up call to see high profile economists dismissive of the ICT sector in Australia , especially because it is damaging to an indigenous Australian ICT industry that struggles to receive due acknowledgment by government and business in Australia.
Still, Deloitte provides an overview into the markets where Australian companies can seek opportunities, and how engagement with Asia will benefit the Australian economy. This should be no different for Australia ICT sector businesses.
The Deloitte study is at odds with the Price WaterhouseCoopers The StartUp Economy report released earlier this year.
Deloitte are bearish on the ICT sector however PwC maintains in its report that the Australian start-up sector could grow to become comparable in size to the mining sector by 2033. We remain mindful that Google commissioned the PWC study……. PwC ventures that the start-up sector could be worth $109 billion to the economy and employ 540,000 people.
Glaringly consistent , both of these reports indicate that the indigenous Australian ICT industry struggles to receive due acknowledgment by government and business in Australia and that without a quantum change the industry has problems ahead.
On a more positive note Deloitte indicate the primary area to look iare markets that can be expected to grow significantly faster than the global economy as a whole over the next 10 or 20 years, or by more than about 3.4% per year. For example, global markets for gas, tourism and agribusiness are each expected to grow at rates at least 10% faster than global GDP as a whole.
History has shown, global growth alone isn’t enough to deliver success to Australia. We also need an edge, a source of comparative advantage that’s hard for other nations to match, so that the world wants what we have.
The report said five big-picture advantages gave Australia a head-start: world-class resources in land, minerals and energy; proximity to the world’s fastest growing markets in Asia; our use of English, the world’s business language; a temperate climate; and well understood tax and regulatory regimes.
Building the Lucky Country co-author and global thinker on growth strategy, Mehrdad Baghai, Managing Director of Alchemy Growth Partners, said: “The Australian economy grows when Australian advantage meets global opportunity. The multi-billion-dollar question is: where will global growth and Australian advantage next intersect? That’s where we will catch the waves that will drive our prosperity, today and tomorrow.”
Read the Deloitte Australia positing for prosperity report here
Read the PWC report here
http://www.digitalpulse.pwc.com.au/australian-tech-startup-ecosystem/
The Merkin Group are focused on agribusiness , fully diveresified financuial services (including wealth management) and we have maintained for over one and a half decades that ICT competency is one of the trinity or resources that underpins business today.