Despite these gains, survey measures of non-mining capacity utilisation have not improved much over the past year. A measure derived from the NAB survey (based on weighting industries according to their contribution to investment) implies that capacity utilisation remains a bit below average (Graph 3).
By itself, this suggests that demand in the nonmining sector will need to rise a little further before businesses feel the need to undertake substantial investment in new capacity. Our forecasts for the economy suggest that this will occur in time, but the extent and timing of new investment remains uncertain.