More than half of businesses experienced cost increases over the past three months and many passed them on to their customers, a new Australian Bureau of Statistics survey found.
Increased migration “certainly needs to be a priority in the years ahead”, says Coles CEO Steve Cain.said on Thursday: “The biggest challenge we face from an employment point of view for the country is still around immigration numbers.“If we want to keep inflation under reasonable levels of control in the future then there’s going to have to be more people available to work.”Going into the federal election, both the Coalition and Labor are cautious about increasing immigration levels.
Overall, 57 per cent of all businesses experienced increased business costs over that period. Almost half of these businesses have completely or partially passed on increased costs to customers, the ABS said., the highest level since the goods and services tax was introduced more than 20 years ago. “The trade prices data also shows that much of Australia’s recent inflationary surge has been imported due to prolonged global supply chain bottlenecks caused by the pandemic,” Mr Felsman said.