BIS Shrapnel has come to the same obvious conclusion as everyone else who has looked at the planned resources sector investment in Queensland (Growth years tipped for Queensland):

QUEENSLAND can look forward to booming growth in the next four or five years, according to economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel, with mining and infrastructure investment leading the way.

“You’ll wake up next year in a much stronger economy than the one you went to sleep in at Christmas,” the forecaster’s chief economist told an economic outlook briefing in Brisbane yesterday.

Frank Gelber said a post-global financial crisis hiatus in state government spending as its “drought-proofing” water grid program wound up and other major public works were completed had seen Queensland’s economy slide in the past two years, though the downturn had been cushioned by federal stimulus spending and projects such as Brisbane’s Airport Link toll road.

But growth in construction in the next two years would be higher than pre-GFC “when government spending boosted the economy following a decade in the 1990s when the state government did very little”, Dr Gelber said.