INTRODUCTION

The Australian Government has identified a number of industry sectors that present opportunities for future growth. For the purposes of this release, these industry sectors are referred to as Growth Sectors to align with the Department of Industry and Science's policy terminology.

These Growth Sectors are:

• Advanced manufacturing;
• Mining equipment, technology and services;
• Oil, gas and energy resources;
• Medical technologies and pharmaceuticals; and
• Food and agribusiness.

The Department of Industry and Science (DIS) funded an additional sample in the 2013-14 Business Characteristics Survey (BCS) to collect a range of characteristics for businesses in these sectors. This information is to provide a baseline understanding of the current status of businesses in these sectors and to develop a means of measuring their performance in the future.

This release presents key indicators of internet commerce (i.e. the placing and receiving of orders via the internet) and innovation in Australian businesses in the Growth Sectors, as compiled from the 2013-14 BCS.

Information about how the conceptual definition of each Growth Sector was mapped to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industry Classification (ANZSIC) is provided in the Explanatory Notes of this publication, and a full list of the ANZSIC classes included in each of the Growth Sectors is available to download as a data cube.


STRUCTURE OF THIS RELEASE

There are two components to this release: web based information and data cubes. The data cubes contain detailed data that underpins the tables, and commentary included in the web based information.

Statistics for each of the Growth Sectors are presented separately in both the web based information and the data cubes.


FUTURE RELEASE

Characteristics of Businesses in Selected Growth Sectors (cat. no. 8170.0) will be released in August 2015. This release will present statistics on a selection of topics including nature of business ownership, collaborative arrangements, performance measures, barriers, innovation, business use of information technology, skills and markets.


DATA QUALITY

Information about data quality is provided in the Quality Declaration and Explanatory Notes and must be taken into consideration when interpreting the statistics in this release.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.

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