Australia will become one of only a handful of the world's net exporters of capital, according to a leading fund manager.
Perpetual Investments chief investment officer Emilio Gonzalez said the continual build up of superannuation assets will eventually result in Australia becoming a net lender to the world by 2026.
"Finding a home for these funds which are going to deliver long-term returns to investors will be an on-going challenge," Gonzalez said speaking at a Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia) conference yesterday in Sydney.
According to Gonzalez, given the growing superannuation contributions, the trend will be for an increase in international investments by Australians in absolute and also asset allocation terms.
"The weight of money could lead to Australia becoming a net exporter of capital, what this means is Australia will not run current account surpluses due to our continued trade deficit, but rather, Australia will lend more money to other countries than they lend to us," Gonzalez said.
Superannuation contributions from workers are forecast to still exceed the draw-downs of retirees.
Neither demographic changes, nor a temptation to use the pool of assets as a source of funding for projects, which Gonzalez said may have inherent shortcomings within a market based economy, would affect the end result.
Superannuation contributions have grown over the past three years at an annual growth rate as high as 18 per cent, taking contributions to more than $1 trillion or equivalent to 100 per cent of Australia's annual economic activity.
