New South Wales (NSW) is located in the south east of Australia and is over 800,000 km2 in size. The State’s principal land use is agriculture.

NSW is the powerhouse of the national economy with a Gross State Product of A$212 billion in 1998/99. It is the largest economy in Australia, accounting for 36% of the national Gross Domestic Product, well ahead of Victoria (26%) and Queensland (16%).

Regional NSW makes an important contribution to the State’s economy with Gross Regional Product comprising almost 31% of NSW’s Gross Product in 1997/98.

A key to regional economic growth is value adding to resource-based industries such as food and timber processing.

NSW boasts an extensive road network with high quality and well maintained highways crossing the State. NSW has around 200,000 km of roads, of which more than 36,000 km are main roads and highways.

The State has about 12,000 kilometres of rail track, which is more than one quarter of the national rail network. The rail system carries about 30% of all Australian freight.

NSW’s population of 6.4 million is mainly distributed along the eastern seaboard with satellite cities north and south of Sydney at Newcastle (473,900) and Wollongong (260,100). Some 62% of NSW population lives in Sydney.

The Sydney Harbour provides a spectacular setting for the city’s central business district and North Sydney business district.

The city is Australia’s major business and financial centre, being the address of 65% of finance industry business such as banking, insurance and funds management. Close to half of the finance industry’s gross product and more than a third of its 310,000 employees are concentrated in Sydney.

The world’s largest international accounting and consultancy firms have headquarters in Sydney, with an equally high concentration of law, management and marketing firms.

Sydney’s workforce is highly skilled and multilingual. Half of Australia’s graduates in finance and insurance in 1998 came from one of the State’s tertiary institutions, providing the largest pool of finance graduates in the country.

One quarter of Sydney’s residents were born overseas, making the city home to 52% of Australia’s Asian language speakers and 32 % of European language speakers. This diversity is unmatched anywhere in the word and provides international companies with a pool of Asian, European and Middle Eastern language skills.