SYDNEY, July 14 (Reuters) – Australian business conditions were steady in June as cost pressures eased following a U.S.-Iran peace \u200cdeal to end their conflict, a survey showed on Tuesday, \u200calthough renewed hostilities have since sent oil prices higher again. <\/p>\n
The survey from National \u200bAustralia Bank showed its index of business conditions was steady at +3 in June for a third straight month. Confidence also improved to -5, from a deeply pessimistic -14 in May. <\/p>\n
That was attributable to positive news from the \u200cMiddle East after the \u2060U.S. and Iran signed an agreement to end a multi-month war that unleashed a global energy shock. \u2060Product price growth eased back to its February level in June and retail prices declined for the first time in seven years, the \u200bsurvey showed. <\/p>\n
“In \u200ba broader macro sense, the business \u200bsurvey results remain consistent with \u200ca slowing in activity growth through H1 2026, but also show that the impact of the Middle East conflict has been less severe in terms of both activity and price pressures than had been feared,” NAB said. <\/p>\n
However, tensions flared up again in the Gulf \u200cthis week. The U.S. renewed military \u200bstrikes on Iran and reinstated its blockade \u200bof shipping via the \u200bStrait of Hormuz. Brent crude prices rose 2% to $85 \u200ca barrel, the highest point \u200bsince mid-June, having \u200bjumped nearly 10% overnight. <\/p>\n
The Reserve Bank of Australia has raised interest rates three times this year to 4.35% to beat back \u200bthe global energy \u200cshock. It last held policy steady in June, but warned \u200bfurther policy tightening could not be ruled out. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bStella Qiu; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, July 14 (Reuters) – Australian business conditions were steady in June as cost pressures eased following a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[246112,114,12842,85,46,157540,194279],"class_list":["post-540245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-australian-business-conditions","tag-business","tag-business-conditions","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-middle-east-conflict","tag-national-australia-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}