Economic Insight

The CCIWA Business Confidence Survey is the longest running and most comprehensive business survey in WA. Produced quarterly it covers businesses of all sizes and sectors across the state and includes:

• Expert analysis about the short and medium-term business confidence
• Comprehensive data regarding issues such as labour costs, profitability, and capital expenditure

The first of its kind in the State, the CCIWA Consumer Confidence survey provides invaluable insights into the attitudes and sentiments of Western Australian consumers.

Analysis includes:

• Short and medium-term expectations of economic conditions provided by metropolitan and regional consumers
• The major concerns for consumers in the current economic climate – including spending habits, employment prospects and financial health

2025

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2020

Outlook is a biannual CCIWA publication that provides expert forward-looking economic analysis. It contains:

• Analysis of the state, national and international economies
• Economic forecasts on key indicators such as inflation, the labour force and employment

Produced by our well-informed and market-conscious economics team, Outlook makes sure you stay ahead of the current and expected changes in economic conditions.

For further information, please contact [email protected]

March 2025 Report

The global economy is in the midst of a tectonic shift, as a wave of political turnover reshapes the international policy landscape. A new crop of leaders has arrived, and few are set to have a bigger impact than re-elected US President Donald Trump.

Trump has already sent shockwaves through global markets, particularly with his widely publicised tariff war. His decision to impose tariffs on key trading partners has spooked many, from both an economic and geopolitical perspective. On the economic front, tariffs are expected to fan the flames of inflation, keep interest rates elevated, and further strengthen the US dollar. These policies are straining diplomatic relations with major economies – including Western Australia’s largest trading partner, China.

Previous Economic Outlook Reports

Western Australia’s regions are the engine room of the WA economy, supporting a range of key export industries, including resources, agriculture and tourism.

Regional Pulse breaks down key results from the CCIWA Business Confidence Survey, providing insights into the conditions facing businesses in WA’s regional centres. The report contains:

• Comprehensive data on key economic indicators across the regions, including profitability, capital expenditure, production, labour costs and employment.
• The major barriers facing regional businesses over the next 12 months.

March 2025 Report

Over the March quarter, business confidence in regional WA remained steady in the short term and strengthened over the longer term.

For the coming quarter, two in five (40%) regional businesses expect economic conditions to improve, a marginal increase of one percentage point from last quarter. 43% anticipate conditions will remain unchanged, reflecting a five percentage point rise, while the remaining 17% expect weaker conditions.

Over the next year, almost three in 10 (28%) regional businesses anticipate stronger conditions, up three percentage points from last quarter. In contrast, one in five (20%) expect softer conditions, marking a significant 11 percentage point decline from the December 2024 quarter. The remaining one half (52%) expect economic conditions to remain steady.

Compared with metro businesses, a slightly smaller proportion of regional businesses reported they expect stronger conditions over the next three months, with a difference of two percentage points. This is the opposite for longer term confidence, with a marginally greater proportion of regional businesses expecting stronger conditions, again with a difference of two percentage points. The difference in the percentage of businesses expecting weaker conditions in the longer term, however, is more striking – 27% of metro business expect conditions to worsen over the coming year, compared with only 20% of regional businesses.

Produced quarterly, our inflation update provides charts and tables on consumer price trends in Perth and all the capital cities.

March 2025:

• Nationally, annual inflation remained unchanged since the previous quarter, reading 2.4% in March. This marks a 1.2 percentage point decline from March 2024.
• Perth’s CPI rose 0.5% over the quarter, bringing inflation down to 2.8% over the year – down 0.1 percentage points from 2.9% in December. Perth’s annual inflation remains the highest of all capital cities.
• What influenced CPI this quarter?
  • The main contributors to higher prices over the quarter were fruit and vegetables (+3.5%), medical products (+4.7%) and automotive fuel (+3.4%).
  • Conversely, electricity (-27.6% driven by subsidies), transport fares (-11.1% due to free public transport in January) and international travel (-7.1%) saw the greatest price falls.

2025

2024

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2020