Australian building approvals increased for a third consecutive month during the April, thus spurring doubts on the relatively common opinion that residential construction will slow in the future years. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, approvals advanced 3% to 20,243 after seasonal adjustments, and were better than market expectations of a plunge of 3%. This figure was 0.7% higher than levels of a year earlier, as well as was the highest monthly total since October 2015. The strength of the release was mainly affected by private sector excluding houses — namely apartments — which soared 8.1% reaching 10,548, thus reimbursing a decrease in private sector housing approvals which plunged 1.9% slipping to 9,695. Overall, the following data shows there were more apartments than freestanding houses approved in April. Following situation had never been seen before.
Another data, which was also revealed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, showed that Australia's current account deficit narrowed to a seasonally adjusted -$20.79 billion in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of last year. Economists, in turn, had expected a current account deficit of $19.5 billion in the quarter. Meanwhile, the fourth quarter deficit was upwardly revised to $22.63 billion from the $21.11 billion initially reported.
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