Canberra's economy was among the strongest growing in Australia's regions in the 2016-17 financial year, with a new report showing its value reached $37.6 billion.
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The latest SGS Economics and Planning report on economic performance of Australia's cities and regions, published on Tuesday, shows Canberra's economic growth in the period was 4.6 per cent, well above the ten-year average of 3.2 per cent growth.
Around Australia, the regions with the strongest growth included regional South Australia at 6.6 per cent and regional Victoria at 5.8 per cent, with both boosted by strong agricultural production.
At 4.6 per cent growth, Canberra led the Northern Territory at 3.9 per cent, Sydney at 3.3 per cent and Melbourne at 2.8 per cent.
Among cities and regions recording negative growth were Perth at -3.5 per cent, regional Western Australia at -1.4 per cent - representing a technical recession for both economies during 2016-17.
The report shows that despite being the capital's largest employment category, public administration made no contribution to the growth figures last financial year.
Data showed the the highest contribution to Canberra's GDP growth came from the professional services sector, at 2.7 percentage points and accounting for almost 60 per cent of all growth in the period.
SGS says only twice before has an industry in Canberra made a larger contribution to growth - public administration during the Keating Labor government in 1993-94, representing 2.8 percentage points and at the end of the Howard government in 2006-07, representing 4.0 percentage points.
Nationally the public administration sector represents about 6 per cent of all economic growth, but the figure is closer to 25 per cent in Canberra's economy.
"Canberra's GDP growth tends to track the national average less closely than other capital cities," the report said.
"This is due to its small size and the fact that its largest industry, public administration, is less dependent on overall economic conditions.
"The most substantial difference over the past twenty years is the increased importance of professional services, which grew from 7.3 per cent in 1996-97 to 10.3 per cent in 2016-17 and health care which increased from 6.8 per cent to 10.8 per cent.
"Canberra's population has continued to grow despite the cuts (albeit more slowly than the Australian average), resulting in negative GDP per capita growth in 2013-14. Again, the GDP per capita growth rate recovered strongly growing by 2.9 per cent."
The report said Australia's mostly homogeneous economic structure of the early 1980s had given way to a more complex landscape in the past three decades.
Where manufacturing was the primary income generator across most parts of the country - apart from certain areas which had specialist industries like agriculture, mining and manufacturing - more recent statistics highlight the productivity challenge facing cities and regions.
"The economic evolution of the past 30 years has resulted in a far more complex picture.
"The rise of knowledge-intensive services, differentials in government policy and investment, the resources boom, the declining competitiveness of manufacturing and other changes have created a patchwork economy."
Last year's census found the ACT's population had grown by 11.2 per cent in five years while Gungahlin was Australia's second-fastest growing region, with 71,000 residents, up from 47,000 in 2011.
