There are few things in business quite as depressing as empty order books.

But that is precisely the situation in which many Australian businesses now find themselves.

The National Australia Bank puts it bluntly in the results of its latest business survey, which have just been published.

It said forward orders, held by the nation’s businesses, have fallen to levels not seen since June 1991, when Australia was also in recession.

“More disconcertingly. business expectations for the next 12 months fell to the lowest level since the survey began in 1988.” the bank added.

So Access Economics’ report that there are “very few new projects” on Australia’s investment horizons comes as no surprise.

But this private forecaster still expects that government investments will eventually offset some of the present slide in private sector investment.

It says the Federal Government’s Education revolution, which is funding schools across the country, should be particularly helpful.

The picture that the Reserve Bank painted, in statistics it released yesterday, was also grim.

These showed that business borrowing fell by 0.6 per cent in March, after a fall of 0.5 per cent in February.

NAB economists are still predicting that the Australian economy will contract by 1 per cent this year.

They are also forecasting just 1 per cent growth in 2010.

But they also expect further interest rate cuts to take the Reserve Bank’s marker rate to just 2 per cent this year.