Economic activity has remained buoyant over the past two years despite the global economic slowdown. GDP growth98 has averaged 3½ per cent per annum since the first quarter of 2001 and has been around or above 4 per cent in seven of the past ten years. The economy has also proved much more resilient to climatic and external economic shocks than in the past. This performance can be partly attributed to the improvement in potential output growth that became evident in the mid-1990s and was described in more detail in Chapter I. But it also reflects some temporary and cyclical factors, the most notable being a spike in export earnings early in the millennium and a recent surge in inward migration...