The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) recently released minutes from its monetary policy meeting earlier this month show the central bank is increasingly concerned about global growth.

At the same time, it noted that the economies of its key trading partners are still growing near their long-term averages.

Even so, the RBA observed that economic indicators show a continued softening of growth in China, though the bank believes the Middle Kingdom’s policymakers have the scope to ease policy to help support gross domestic product (GDP) growth.

China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 27.4 percent of the country’s two-way trade in 2013 and absorbing a substantial 35.2 percent of exports.

Iron ore is Australia’s top export, accounting for nearly 22 percent of the country’s total exports of goods and services last year, and China has been a major destination for the base metal. But prices have plummeted by nearly 40 percent on a year-to-date basis due to a glut of production resulting from new projects coming on line, as well as falling Chinese demand for steel due to weakening in the country’s housing market.

Australia’s other major trading partner is Japan, and the RBA said that growth appears to be picking up slightly over there, though the bank conceded that the overall picture remains unclear. Japan accounted for 13.8 percent of Australia’s two-way trade last year, including 19.6 percent of the country’s exports.

One area where the RBA has hoped to boost overseas trade is by using its monetary policy to engineer a decline in the exchange rate. A lower exchange rate should make the country’s goods and services more competitive in the global market.

With the peak in mining investment now past, the central bank is keen for one or more of the non-mining sectors to take over leadership of the country’s economy. Thus far, housing has been the only sector to step up since it’s a natural beneficiary of historically low interest rates. But the RBA has become increasingly wary of a housing bubble and has recently focused its attention on reining in real estate investors.

Although the central bank might prefer the Australian dollar to trade below USD0.85, the currency has proved unusually resilient, perhaps in part due to the perception that its value is backed by the country’s resource riches.

After hitting an interim peak near USD0.95 in early July, the Australian dollar suffered a sharp decline in September and currently trades around USD0.88. That’s not all that far away from the low for this cycle, which it briefly touched in early October.

But given the declines in key commodity prices, the RBA says that the exchange rate remains high by historical standards and is “offering less assistance than would normally be expected in achieving balanced growth in the economy.”

Even so, Australia’s GDP growth appears likely to outpace the US this year. But the RBA still frets about the fact that the pace of expansion will remain below the economy’s long-term trend of 3.25 percent annual growth until 2016.

For full-year 2014, economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the economy will grow by 3.0 percent, significantly higher than the expectation for a comparatively tepid 2.2 percent from the US.

The RBA’s next set of forecasts will be published on Nov. 7, in its quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy. The central bank’s last round of forecasts showed that it didn’t expect the economy to hit the key threshold of 3.25 percent until 2016.

However, private-sector economists, whose forecasts have been updated more recently, see growth remaining below trend through 2016.