Introduction
The Industry and Innovation Competitiveness Agenda outlines sector-wide reform aimed at facilitating greater collaboration, research and development, boosting Australia’s competitiveness and productivity, and reducing red tape. As part of this, a number of sectors have been identified as having the potential to contribute to future economic growth. For the purposes of this release, these industry sectors are referred to as Growth Sectors.
These Growth Sectors are:
- Advanced manufacturing;
- Mining equipment, technology and services;
- Oil, gas and energy resources;
- Medical technologies and pharmaceuticals; and
- Food and agribusiness.
To maximise the potential for growth within these sectors, as well as the broader economic benefits this will deliver, it is important that characteristics of the Growth Sectors are understood. Such understanding may guide policy formulation to facilitate growth by reducing barriers, and increasing opportunities for innovation and collaboration. To that end, the Department of Industry and Science (DIS) funded an additional sample in the 2013-14 Business Characteristics Survey (BCS) to collect a range of characteristics for businesses in these sectors. This information will provide a baseline understanding of the current status of businesses in these sectors and develop a means of measuring their performance in the future.
This release presents statistics on a selection of topics including nature of business ownership, collaborative arrangements, performance measures, barriers, innovation, business use of information technology, skills and markets.
Information about how the conceptual definition of each Growth Sector was mapped to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industry Classification (ANZSIC) system is provided in the Explanatory Notes of this publication and a full list of the ANZSIC classes included in each of the Growth Sectors is available to download as a data cube.
Structure of this release
There are two components to this release: web based information and data cubes. The web based information contains summary statistics and commentary on the following topics: foreign ownership, intellectual property methods, collaborative arrangements, income received from exporting goods and/or services, barriers to general business activities or performance and skills used in undertaking core business activities. Detailed statistics on these and further topics can be accessed via the data cubes.
Statistics for each of the Growth Sectors are presented separately in both the web based information and the data cubes and are cross classified by business size (based on employment) and innovator status as well as by ANZSIC class where possible.
For comparison purposes, in this publication, 2013-14 BCS All industries and selected BCS industry estimates by employment size and innovation status are presented alongside the 2013-14 Growth Sector estimates.
Previous release
Summary of IT Use and Innovation in Selected Growth Sectors (cat. no. 8166.0.80.001) was released on 18 June 2015. The release presented key indicators of internet commerce statistics (i.e. the placing and receiving of orders via the internet) and innovation in Australian businesses in the Growth Sectors as compiled from the 2013-14 BCS.
Data quality
Information about data quality is provided in the Quality Declaration and Explanatory Notes and must be taken into consideration when interpreting the statistics in this release.
Inquiries
For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.
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