This worsens any pre-existing inefficiencies in the logistics sector and is a possible cause for Australia’s sharp fall in its ‘Trading Across Borders’ ranking. The current system is one which forces Small-to-Medium Enterprises to pay freight forwarders, customs brokers and others on the supply chain to engage in ineffective processes on their behalf. Consequently, an estimated A$1 billion of value is tied up in these outdated and antiquated practices, and it’s the small to medium enterprises that suffer the most. Part of the problem is that, while systems are not completely analogue, they are set up to reward inefficiency and duplication rather than innovation.įor example, a perverse situation has arisen whereby some players in the supply chain derive significant income from late fees and penalties – and they are able to do so because their customers and their customers’ customers have limited visibility over their cargo.
While the advent of email naturally reduced the use of paper, the current processes used by freight forwarders, customs brokers and trade finance have remained, for the most part, the same with minimal evolution.
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This low ranking is caused by an astonishing lack of digitization in importation logistics where manual processing remains the norm. Now, the nation is lagging behind New Zealand, which is 56th, Singapore, at 42nd, and the US, at 36th. That’s an astonishing slide from 2011, when it was 34th. As it stands, Australia sits at the 95th spot on the World Bank’s ‘Trading Across Borders’ ranking. Very clearly, the major bugbear in arriving at the present rating is the “Trading across Borders” criterion. The first column – Difficulty in doing Business – deserves a closer examination: This is how Australia compares in the key parameters with the other countries previously analyzed by the author: Overall, the country is very easy to do business in but it has a few problems. This has obvious implications for the Australian toy market. The Children population segment 14 years old and younger numbered 4.6 million in 2018 and is growing at a 1.4% annual rate. This has resulted in proportionally fewer children (under 15 years of age) in the population and a larger proportion of people aged 65 and over. Like most developed countries, Australia's population is ageing as a result of sustained low fertility and increasing life expectancy.
Queen Elizabeth II being the Head of State. Australia is a constitutional monarchy, largely modeled on the Westminster system of parliamentary government with H.M. The county’s population of 24.7 million is predominantly Caucasian with the original population, the Aboriginals, representing less than 4%. Vitor Gaspar, the IMF’s director of fiscal affairs, has told an audience at the launch of the IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor that Australia’s income inequality growth has been similar to the US, South Africa, India, China, Spain and the UK since the 1980s. Australia is among countries with the highest growth in income inequality in the world over the past 30 years, according to the International Monetary Fund. Yet, like in many other countries, this wealth is not equally distributed in Australia either. In fact, Australia is one of the most urbanized nations with over 90% of its population living in urban centers and occupying a mere 0.22% of the country’s land area.Īustralia is also a very wealthy country – it had a GDP of A$1.69 trillion and became the wealthiest country in the world in 2018 in terms of its median wealth per adult. The sixth-largest country by land mass, its population is comparatively small with most people living around the eastern and south-eastern coastlines. Australia ranks as one of the best countries to live in the world by international comparisons of wealth, education, health and quality of life.