Another rise in the Reserve Bank’s Commodity Price Index in February which hit a four year high last month.
That took the gain since the most recent low in December, 2015 to just over 46%.
Preliminary figures from the RBA for last month show the index rose 3.9% in Australian dollar terms last month, after a revised to be up 3.2% in Australian dollar terms over the year to February.
The index dipped to a low of 93.2 in December 2015 and rose 46.5% by February when it was on 139.8. That’s the highest reading since February 2014 when it hit 141.6 in the long slide to the most recent low 22 months later,
In Special Drawing Rights terms (A type of international currency between central banks and groups like the IMF) the index rose 1.8% in February against the 7.7% rise (revised from 7.1%January and a 4.5% rise in December).
"Iron ore and coking coal led the increase. The rural subindex increased in the month, while the base metals subindex declined,” the RBA said.
"Consistent with previous releases, preliminary estimates for iron ore, coking coal, thermal coal and LNG export prices are being used for the most recent months, based on market information. Using spot prices for the bulk commodities, the index decreased by 1.7 per cent in February in SDR terms, to be 2.2 per cent higher over the past year.”
