Australia's economy is likely to be already in recession, Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens said today.
'I think the reasonable person, looking at all the information available now, would come to the conclusion that the Australian economy, too, is in recession,' Stevens said.
The central bank chief's comments come a day after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said it was inevitable that the global downturn would drag Australia into recession.
Australia's last recession was in the early 1990s but the economy posted its first negative growth figures for eight years in the final quarter of 2008, and is expected to do the same in the first three months of 2009.
That would officially tip Australia into recession, usually defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
But Stevens said regardless of the figures, it was reasonable to conclude that the recession had already arrived. 'It is very rare for Australia to escape an international downturn and there is no precedent for avoiding one of this size,' he said.
Stevens said the recession was Australia's eighth since World War II.
However, he saw some positive signs in the global economy, saying recent commodity price rises appeared to show the emergence of China - which has underpinned Australia's economy in recent years - was continuing.
'It is probably not entirely coincidental that the clearest signs of a turning point in economic activity appear to be accumulating in China, though not exclusively there,' he said.
