A similar story can be told with regard to debt servicing (Graph 9). Its ratio as a percentage of exports reached a peak of 20 per cent in the late 1980s, but is now less than half of that level.
In Australia, we always have to keep a weather eye on the balance of payments, but it does not seem to represent quite the same constraint now that it did in the 1980s. Of course, it is not really up to me to make these judgments. It is really up to the market.