The Australian Treasury Department has refuted the idea that corporate profits are worsening inflation. However, it said the mining sector played a small role in consumer price growth.
During a recent Senate estimates hearing, Treasury official Sarah Hunter said the department had analysed the impact of corporate profits on inflation.
“And that’s where looking at mining versus the non-mining sector becomes important because the mining share has clearly lifted quite significantly,” she said.
“But if you take that out and look at the non-mining sector, the movements are much less pronounced.”
Hunter noted that there was a lot of volatility in the data and that Treasury tried not to interpret too much from it from one quarter to the next….