New air links for Darwin

Good news for Darwin -- Singapore Airlines and Virgin Australia have announced new international and domestic routes between Singapore and Darwin.

Singapore Airlines’ regional full service airline, Silk Air, will begin a service between Singapore and Darwin four times weekly beginning March 26 next year; with Virgin Australia complementing these services with daily flights between Darwin and Sydney starting April 2.

Darwin is the gateway to the Northern Territory’s popular tourist destinations and is an increasingly important commercial hub. The new  services offer visitors from Singapore, Asia and Europe the opportunity to visit the Northern Territory and then travel on to Sydney and the East Coast of Australia.

The  services will also be attractive to business travellers who will have the option of a quality business class service from Sydney to Darwin and on to Singapore and beyond.

To accommodate eligible Virgin Australia guests and those of its alliance partners, Virgin Australia also announced that it would open a lounge at Darwin Airport.

Both airlines are expecting to commence codeshare arrangements on each other’s services from early 2012.

Prepared by Bob Woodward & Associates: offering you business consultancy, accounting, payroll administration and ancillary services in Darwin, The Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.woodwards.co/

Obama visits Darwin

It’s interesting that President Obama will be visiting Darwin this month during his first visit to Australia as the leader of the United States. The visit is short: the president is making a two-day trip to Australia between attending the APEC trade meeting in Hawaii and the East Asia Summit in Bali. Some might say it is only a logistic stop. But it will focus world attention on the city at a time when the oil and gas industry is front and foremost in the minds of many businesses.

The oil and gas industry is what will drive the NorthenTerritory economy in the foreseeable future according to analysts, with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work from servicing the industry being mentioned

It was announced not long ago that the Northern Territory government has chosen a consortium called ShoreASCO as its preferred bidder to build, own and operate a huge oil and gas support base alongside East Arm Wharf.

The consortium includes several giant companies, such as ASCO Holdings, Capella Capital and Macmahon Contractors.

The base will be open to all companies servicing the oil and gas industry; and is expected to offer important benefits in skilled jobs, good wages and work for Territory businesses.Eight floating gas platforms are expected to be operating off the Territory coast within the next decade, say some analysts.

Shell has confirmed that it will use Darwin as the maintenance centre for the floating Prelude platform. And Darwin is almost certain to service the GDF Suez and Advent fields in the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf.

Prepared by Bob Woodward & Associates: offering you business consultancy, accounting, payroll administration and ancillary services in Darwin, The Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.woodwards.co/

Darwin's gas and oil future

A consortium led by Asco Holdings; a company registered in Scotland,  will construct, own and operate a marine supply base in Darwin in a project designed to establish the city as an oil and gas hub.

The deal comes following the recent Aberdeen-based Asco buy-out of the Australian logistics support company ShoreBase from the Shorelands Group, leading it to take on the ShoreAsco name.

ShoreAsco joined with Shorelands, Macmahon Contractors and Capella Capital among other groups to form the ShoreAsco consortium, named as the preferred bidder for the Territory contract .

The Northen Territory government is now conducting negotiations with the consortium with a view to finalising contracts by the end of 2011.

To be built next to East Arm Wharf, the base will service rig tender vessels, supplying everything from food and water to fuel and drilling equipment. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

Darwin has already been named as the preferred site for Japanese company Inpex to build an LNG plant and the city is eager to attract further oil and gas investment.

Meanwhile, NT government officials this month attended a jobs expo in Dublin to recruit Irish construction and oil industry professionals to fill some of the 20,000 jobs that the government anticipates in the next five years with the development of major oil and gas operations.

If things continue to plan, it is expected that Darwin will witness a new housing boom, among other things.

Prepared by Bob Woodward & Associates: offering you business consultancy, accounting, payroll administration and ancillary services in Darwin, The Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.woodwards.co/

Retirement incomes under a cloud

Remember the days when an employee was guaranteed a certain pension from an employer when he or she reached retirement age? You knew exactly where you stood. That all ended two decades ago, when workers found themselved faced with ‘ a new pension system, one of ‘accumulation funds, by which retirement incomes depended on what the markets and  fund managers gave you. Undefined, and sometimes messy.

The first fifteen years following the Superannuation Guarantee (SG) legislation being introduced in 1992 went well, with a compound annual rate of return provided by the share market at 15.5 per cent. The power of compound interest plus mandatory contributions starting at 3 per cent and rising to 9 per cent would have seen retirement accounts increase up to tenfold 10-fold in that period.

Things have changed, however, not least the unpredictable world economy. The market has been fruitless now for five years. After the 20 per cent correction between April 11 and August 8, the ASX 200 accumulation index (capital return plus dividends) has produced zero five-year return. And the 10-year return is not the brightest at just 6.6 per cent, while the 20-year total return is now below 10 per cent..

Added to this is the painful fact that fund managing fees now account for a much larger percentage of the long-term return.

With both the Europe (Eurozone and the UK) and the US  heavily in debt it  is unlikely that the markets will turn around soon – and as people become disillusioned with the.returns being generated by the pensions industry.there will doubtless be a marked increase in self-managed supers

If we have learned one thing over the past decade or so, it is is that there are no easy answers for funding retirement.

Prepared by Bob Woodward & Associates: offering you business consultancy, accounting, payroll administration and ancillary services in Darwin, The Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.woodwards.co/

A mixed bag for Territory economy

Commsec's State of the States report for the March quarter indicates the economic performance of the Northern Territory was again a mixed bag.

The report is produced by the Commonweaalth Bank and gives a detailed analysis of each state's economic performance based on eight key indicators.

The report shows the Northern Territory economy is being carried along by consumer spending and a strong jobs market.

Retail spending which continues to buoy the economy in the Northern Territory was 22 per cent above decade-average levels -- higher than anywhere in Australia.

Spending has been supported by the strongest employment market in Australia. The Northern Territory’ unemployment stands at only 3.1%

On the down side, the Northern Territory is the only place in Australia where construction work is not substantially higher than the decade average.

In fact, it is down 28 per cent on the ten year average. It is also two per cent lower than this time last year, says the report.

The report reveals also that the Northern Territory currently has the weakest economy in Australia when it comes to housing finance.

Another point made in the report is that population growth in the Northern Territory was the slowest in seven years.

Prepared by Bob Woodward & Associates: offering you business consultancy, accounting, payroll administration and ancillary services in Darwin, The Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.woodwards.co/

Cattle export ban lifted

The Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association has applauded the federal government’s  decision to lift the live cattle trade suspension, but has cautioned that the cash flow crisis facing producers in the Territory may take more than a year to overcome.

The Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association is the peak primary industry group in the Territory and represents more than 90 per cent of the region’s cattle herd.

The NTCA president, Rohan Sullivan, who has just returned from Indonesia as part of a joint NT Government and industry delegation, says the reality is that there is a great deal of work that needs to be done in Indonesia before the trade returns to some kind of normality.

Cattle numbers leaving Darwin for Indonesia will be restricted for some time, which translates to continuing financial stress for producers waiting for cattle sales – and there is no financial quick fix, says the NTCA. Live cattle exports are of critical importance to the northern pastoral industry and the northern Territory economy as a whole.

The pastoral industry is the Northern Territory’s third largest GDP earner, accounting for more than 50 per cent of the Territory’s primary production and generating over A$400 million in direct income – statistics that highlight the the type of problems that would arise with a continued ban.

With more than 220 pastoral leases, the Territory industry manages a landmass in excess of 620,000 square kilometres and a herd of over two million head. In 2010, more than 300,000 cattle were exported live through the Port of Darwin.

Prepared by Bob Woodward & Associates: offering you business consultancy, accounting, payroll administration and ancillary services in Darwin, The Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.woodwards.co/

Companies to increase hiring

A new survey from Manpower Employment indicates that 35 per cent of Northern Territory companies expect to increase hiring. Only 11 per cent plan a decrease in the number of staff taken on.

As a large proportion of the Territory workforce is transient, so employers are consistently looking to take on new  workers, says the employment company.

One of the biggest concerns facing Northern Territory employers at present is retention, it claims.

The large oil and gas projects starting up in the Territory over the next few months should help to prevent an exodus of skilled trade workers. The projects will require thousands of workers in the construction phase alone .

Unemployment in the  Northern Territory rose slightly last month, but is still only a little above 3 per cent - a level that experts consider to be, in effect, full employment.

Prepared by Bob Woodward & Associates: offering you business consultancy, accounting, payroll administration and ancillary services in Darwin, The Northern Territory, Australia
http://www.woodwards.co/