Foreign investors have turned especially bearish on the Australian economy, with one describing it as "toast", a National Australia Bank report says.

Chief economist Ivan Colhoun said a recent visit to clients in Britain, continental Europe and the Middle East revealed a "uniformly negative view on Australia's prospects".

"I have never experienced such overwhelming negativity on the outlook for the Australian economy and Australian dollar in all my years marketing the Australian economy offshore," he wrote on Monday.
"To be fair, one investor did say that they were not that negative on Australia.
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"Another described the Australian economy as toast."

Gloomy view
The despondent view reflects investor concerns about weak commodity prices and global demand, the slowdown in China and Australia's increasing reliance on house building and investment to pick up the slack left by the downturn in mining-related infrastructure investment.

This has been borne out by falling overseas demand for Australian shares, bonds and the currency.
Experts have also warned that foreign – mainly Chinese – enthusiasm for residential property in Sydney and Melbourne could also eventually cool.

Official figures showed overseas investors held about 65 per cent of Australia's sovereign debt at the end of June, from a peak of 76 per cent in 2012.

However, NAB is not quite as negative.
Mr Colhoun argued the Reserve Bank of Australia's case that the Aussie's devaluation was helping non-mining segments of the economy.

"At the present time, the improvement in the non-mining economy is more than outweighing the drag from mining, particularly in an employment sense," he said.

China question
On China, he argued that "Chinese industrial production and housing had already had much of their impact on the Australian economy – effectively resulting in a mining recession – but had not resulted in broader non-mining weakness".

However, he cautioned that "other aspects of Chinese demand that have so far been boosting the Australian economy, such as apartment demand, tourism arrivals and agricultural exports, should be monitored closely in coming months for signs of impact from recent Chinese developments".
In good news, if foreign investors were put off by Australia's apparent revolving-door style of prime minister selection, they weren't showing it.

"Australia's prime minister changed in the second week of the trip," Mr Colhoun wrote. "While this was quite a surprise to offshore investors, this was not seen as a major factor for Australian markets, which will continue to be influenced more by developments in global markets, especially in China's economy and by trends in the US dollar and US bond markets."


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-is-toast-foreign-investors-...