The town's being described as a "beneficiary" from the pandemic.
This is according to the findings of a white paper titled The great Australian population shift, put together by property analysts Ripehouse Advisory.
In the report they list Benalla as being one of the top 10 fastest growing regional Local Government Areas in Victoria.
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Head of research Will Farell said that Benalla Rural City was likely one of the beneficiaries of COVID-19.
“By using linear interpolation and Australian Bureau of Statistics . . . data for Benalla, we calculated the pre-COVID annual population growth rate to be 1.24 per cent,” Mr Farell said.
“Growth was heavily dependent upon attracting internal, that is to say, Australian, migration.”
However after working with leading demographer Bernard Salt on that model's assumptions Mr Farell said the post-COVID-19 population boost was likely to jump to a much higher rate of growth.
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“(It was calculated that the) annual population growth would increase to 7.1 per cent, an increase of 5.8 per cent,” he said.
“(This is) largely due to the modelled increase to the number of internal arrivals.
“For this reason, Benalla was noted as being one of the ‘beneficiaries’ of . . . COVID.”
Mr Farell noted that the term ‘beneficiaries’ was coined prior to Victoria's second wave, and it was not intended to cause offence.
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He also said Benalla, which is a Local Government Area with a relatively small population, has only been seeing an increase of about 35 people per year in recent times.
However, if those projections are correct a 7.1 per cent increase to the population listed at the last census which was 14,020 (in the Local Government Area), equates to just under 1000 people relocating to Benalla and district each year.
A number businesses in town would be more than happy to hear when many are just surviving through the pandemic.
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