TASMANIAN VOICES
Tasmania’s decade of changing economic fortunes
by Saul Eslake
08 Apr 2021
By most yardsticks, Tasmania’s economic performance improved significantly between the first and second halves of the decade leading up to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Tasmania’s real gross state product, which is the broadest available measure of the output of goods and services within a state’s borders, increased at an average annual rate of 2.1 per cent over the five years to 2018-19, almost double the 1.2 per cent average annual rate recorded over the preceding five years. Adjusted for differences in population growth, Tasmania’s real per capita gross product grew at a faster rate than the national average between 2013-14 and 2018-19 (indeed, by more than one-and-a-half times the national average), whereas between 2008-09 and 2013-14, Tasmania’s per capita economic growth rate had been almost one-third below the national average.
