New figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Monday showed that Corporate Australia has experienced a windfall in the first quarter of 2010, amassing a total of $57.2 billion while companies' gross operating profits jumped by 3.9 percent in the March quarter.

ABS has also reported that the country's business inventories, which are stocks currently sitting on shelves and warehouses, surged by 0.5 percent in the same quarter, matching earlier forecast by market economists.

The new data also showed that balance of payments for the same quarter was narrowed down to the current account deficit of $16.55 billion, coming from the revised shortfall of $18.47 billion in the December quarter of last year.

Economists had originally projected that deficit to stand at $16.25 billion though ABS said that the improvement would not prevent an export loss of 0.5 percentage points from gross domestic product (GDP).

Also, economists had earlier predicted that the March GDP would be a mere 0.7 percent rise in the quarter, coming from the 0.9 percent seen in the last quarter of 2009, which should lead to an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent for 2010 as compared to last year's 2.7 percent.