Minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia's May 7 monetary policy meeting revealed a central bank that is admitting to contracting economy. In it, the bank said that gross domestic output would shrink 1.25% in the 12 months through the end of June.
Optimistically, the statement said that Australia is and will continue to outperform the other advanced economies that have suffered from this global slow down. The economy is "still expected to record better outcomes in 2009 and 2010 than those in most other advanced countries," the statement said.
Monetary policy may continue to be at a stand-still. The concluding remarks said that "the Board has recently viewed it as appropriate to make smaller and less frequent adjustments to the cash rate" because there have been "some signs of stabilisation in the world economy."
