Australia’s economy has adjusted well to the impact of the mining boom – which is likely to continue to for some time, the Reserve Bank of Australia says.

In a paper presented on Wednesday to the Structural Change and the Rise of Asia conference in Canberra, RBA assistant governor Christopher Kent said the boom had been generally advantageous for Australia.

“While not all parts of the economy have benefited equally, the process of structural adjustment has occurred relatively smoothly overall,” he said.

“Output has grown at close to trend rates, unemployment has remained relatively low and inflation has been close to target.”

Dr Kent said the adjustment of wages and prices had been particularly smooth compared to previous commodity price booms.

“One critical element to the adjustment this time around has been the timely appreciation of the exchange rate as the terms of trade consistently exceeded earlier expectations,” he said.

And while falling commodity prices hinted that one phase of the resources boom was over, there was still more to come, he added.

“The second phase of investment in the resource sector has been in progress for some years and still has some way to run,” he said.

“Resource investment is expected to peak as a share of GDP sometime over the course of the next year or so.

“The third phase of increased production and export of resources has also commenced but has much further to run, especially in the case of LNG, for which investment takes place over a number of years before production comes on stream.”