Australia's gross domestic product gained a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the previous three months, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.
That missed expectations for an increase of 0.8 percent following the 0.6 percent gain in the fourth quarter of 2012.
The terms of trade rose 2.7 percent, while real gross domestic income rose 1.1 percent.
The contributors to expenditure on GDP were net exports (1.0 percentage points) and final consumption expenditure (0.4 percentage points). The detractors were total gross fixed capital formation (-0.7 percentage points) and changes in inventories (-0.4 percentage points).
The main contributors to GDP were agriculture, forestry and fishing (up 2.6 percent), transport, postal and warehousing (up 2.4 percent), financial and insurance services (up 2.2 percent), retail trade (up 2.1 percent) and mining (up 1.5 percent).
Financial and insurance services contributed 0.2 percentage points to the increase in GDP, while the other main contributors each contributed 0.1 percentage points.
On a yearly basis, GDP was up 2.5 percent - also shy of forecasts for an increase of 2.7 percent after climbing 3.1 percent in the three months prior.
Upon the release of the data, the Australian dollar weakened against major trading partners, showing 0.9621 against the greenback, 96.35 against the yen, 1.3589 against the euro and 1.1999 against the NZ dollar.
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