For these projections to be realised, there needs to be increased investment in infrastructure, such as expanded access to mobile broadband, fibreoptic cable connections to households, and power-supply expansion. Infrastructure challenges are wider than just ‘bricks and mortar’ – for example, the lack of a formal delivery address complicates the logistics and is costly for online retailers.
Second, I’ll describe what we anticipated four years ago would be likely to happen after the boom. The Boom Years The rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of the Chinese economy underpinned the strong rise in commodity prices from around the mid 2000s. As global demand for commodities began to outstrip supply, the prices of Australia’s key commodity exports rose dramatically.