I have made the point in a previous speech that the mining industry is an important part of the Australian corporate debt market.6 For a number of years following the financial crisis, those companies issued debt to help fund the mining investment boom, although most finance was raised internally.
7 Over the past couple of years, however, resource-related companies have been relatively inactive; some have even bought back bonds as they have sought to reduce their gearing (thereby contributing to the decline in offshore bonds on issuance for non-financial corporations shown in Graph 2). Meanwhile, other companies have stepped up their issuance (Graph 7).