Tropical North Queensland – More than a holiday destination
The reputation of Townsville as the economic capital of North Queensland is under scrutiny after figures taken from the 2006 census and extrapolated by local economist Bill Cummings show Tropical North Queensland has the bigger and stronger economy – which is predicted to grow at a faster rate than our northern neighbors.
CEO of Advance Cairns Ross Contarino said that he was pleasantly surprised at the strength of our local economy at it compared with other Northern regions.
“Having moved here from Townsville, it was easy to believe the constant rhetoric that the Townsville region was the North’s real powerhouse but after perusing the information extracted from the 2006 census by Bill Cummings, I think all the hype might have been just that” said Mr Contarino.
The figures show that at 265,000 the population of the Tropical North Queensland region is clearly the largest population centre in Northern Australia – eclipsing both Townsville and Darwin. More importantly, it will continue to grow at a higher rate than the other northern centres and by 2026 our population is predicted to grow by up to 20% more than that of the Townsville region.
“The number of people in the workforce was also well ahead of the other northern centres, which is unexpected considering Townsville’s high military and government staff numbers”, explained Mr Contarino.
He went on to say, “this is also equally true regarding business enterprise numbers where our region has nearly 50% more businesses than our counterparts in the Townsville Region”.
“There is also good news regarding the construction industry, where TNQ significantly leads Northern Australia in both building approvals and construction jobs”.
“We don’t have everything going our way, we trail behind the North Queensland region in mining employment but we do have significantly more jobs in the retail sector”, Mr Contarino said.
“It is a different story in agriculture where our gross agricultural production is the highest of all the Northern Regions and the amount of employment in this sector clearly outstrips them as well”.
“Regarding Tourism, of course we all knew that our visitor numbers would be the highest but it is interesting to see that our visitors outnumber both the Townsville and Mackay/Whitsunday numbers combined”.
“Whilst we lag behind some of the other regions in numbers of jobs in the manufacturing segment, we unmistakably lead the others in the Finance, Insurance, Property and Professional Business sectors and we have 25% more manufacturing businesses than Townsville region and almost double that of Darwin. We are the stand out leaders in employment figures in people involved in the Creative Industries” Mr Contarino went on to say.
“For many years there has been a perception in Queensland that the Tropical North is only good for a holiday, but the figures tell us this region is brimming with employment and investment opportunities. In a national sense, Tropical North Queensland’s economy is very strong and looks set to be a leader in Australia’s north”, Mr Contarino said.
Tags: Cairns, economic growth, statistics, TNQ