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Australian GDP expands at more than twice pace forecast
Australia’s economy expanded at more than twice the pace economists forecast last quarter, driven by household spending and engineering construction. The local currency soared. First-quarter gross domestic product advanced 1.3 percent from the previous three months, when it rose a revised 0.6 percent, a Bureau of Statistics report released in Sydney today showed. The result compared with the median of 24 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey for a 0.6 percent gain. The report covers a period before Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis weighed on Asian demand for commodities that prompted Reserve Bank of Australia ... (full story)