In some long-awaited good economic news, the Australian economy has beaten expectations by growing 0.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2015.

That’s a significant improvement from last quarter’s figure of 0.5 per cent. Improved exports were largely to thank for the boost.

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However, the rolling 12 month growth figure continued its downward trend, falling to 2.3 per cent, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported. That’s down from 2.5 per cent last quarter.

Net exports contributed 0.5 percentage points to GDP growth, while household final consumption expenditure and changes in inventories each contributed 0.3 percentage points to GDP growth.

This was offset by a -0.3 percentage point contribution from gross fixed capital formation.

Mining and financial services were the big drivers of growth. Mining contributed 0.3 percentage points and Financial and insurance services contributed 0.2 percentage points.

The terms of trade decreased by 2.9 per cent.