The release of the Annual Trade Report for 2022-23 report continues the Victorian Government’s commitment to ensuring all water participants can easily access water market information.

The Annual Trade Report for 2022-23 highlights that water market prices reflect water availability and water demand where more water available generally means lower prices. Victorian annual rainfall was above average as the La Niña event continued into its third year. With this Victoria experienced high water availability and low water prices.

Report highlights include:

• Historically, the Goulburn and Murray systems saw a consistent rise in prices starting in 2012, peaking in 2019 with the highest prices observed in over ten years. However, between 2019–20 and 2022-23, there was a notable decline in prices in these systems, coinciding with periods of increased water availability.
• Median allocation prices were driven largely by standard commercial trades, as identified by the reason for trade category on trade applications.
• There are few instances of price spikes in zones (1A Greater Goulburn) and (6 VIC Murray - Dart to Barmah) around October and November 2022 mainly due to forward contracts and permanent lease agreements, which shifted the median away from the standard commercial price.
• The total volume of allocation traded in 2022-23 was slightly higher than the previous year. This is consistent with the trend of allocation trade increasing over the past decade.
• In Victoria, both high-reliability and low-reliability water shares transfer of ownership saw reduced volumes and transfer numbers, with the majority of activity concentrated in Northern Victoria, limited activity in Southern Victoria, and none in Western Victoria due to the lack of declared water systems.
• Unlike allocation and water share trading, most of the surface water take and use licence trading occurred in southern Victoria in 2022-23. However, in groundwater take and use licence trade, Northern Victoria was the most active with significant volumes in both change of ownership (23 GL) and temporary trades (7 GL).

For more information about water trading and what it could mean for you or your business, you can find the current Annual Trade Report for 2022-23 below and previous reports can be found here.

 Download PDF Victorian Water Trading Annual Report 2022/232.98 MB