Mr. John McCarthy:

No, it is excluding aircraft. There have been years of under-investment relative to overall GDP. We had a situation at one stage where the purchase of new capital assets - investment - was only just sufficient to cover the depreciation of existing capital stock, which is virtually unheard of in an advanced economy outside wartime. Investment fell to extremely low levels, but we are now seeing domestic demand recovering, more certainty and capacity utilisation beginning to creep up, while firms are trying to rebuild their productive capacity. In the past 18 months investment in core machinery and equipment has been running at 35% to 40%. On that basis and on the basis of the figures we have for the first half of the year, we believe the figure will be close to 30% for the year.