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What happens in China will impact all of Asia
If 2011 was the year of unpredictability, 2012 promises to be what experts and economists are already calling the “yo-yo” year.
On the economic front, growth is expected to slow during the first half of the year for a variety of reasons including the Eurozone crisis, lower housing demand in China, uncertainty in America’s domestic issues and lower factory production in India.
But Asia built on resilience will bounce back, say the experts.
“The catch-phrase for 2012 is the Asia yo-yo,” said Rob Subbaraman, chief Asia economist at Nomura in Hong Kong. “The harder Asia’s economies are hit, the stronger the tailwinds for a bounce back.”
The idea that bad news would beget good news was a recurring theme in economists’ year-end outlooks, a Reuters analysis concluded.
India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are widely expected to lower interest rates next year. Elections in Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea may shake loose even more government spending. China will most likely continue cutting banks’ reserve requirements to try to spur more lending.
Writing in the Washington Post, Tom Orlik predicts Europe will surely leave its mark on the economies of Asia—for all the wrong reasons in 2012.
With the outlook for Europe hanging in the balance, Asia’s exporters are anticipating continued weaker demand from one of their main customers. Most exposed will be smaller trading hubs like South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In 2010, exports were equal to 45% of South Korea’s gross domestic product, with Europe the second-biggest customer.
Regional powerhouses China, Japan and India will also take a hit. Ten years after joining the World Trade Organization, China is the most exposed. Exports were equal to 26% of GDP in 2010, and Europe was the biggest destination. In general, though, a larger domestic market means the big three are less vulnerable to a slowdown in foreign demand than their smaller neighbors.
But for some Asian economies, it is China rather than Europe that will most influence 2012’s course. China is the largest trading partner for many Asian countries, and it is no longer simply an assembly point for goods destined for export.
That means what happens inside China matters a great deal for the rest of Asia. The biggest domestic worry centers on China’s cooling property market, and the repercussions for bank lending and local government borrowing.
Beijing orchestrated a real estate slowdown this year to try to avoid a damaging property boom and bust. But the side effect has been a rise in troubled loans to developers, and a drop in land sales that has cut off a vital source of revenue for heavily indebted local governments.
Barclays economists warned that the “inflation dragon is resting for a while” and could wake with a vengeance in late 2012.
“One can envisage a scenario in which a bottoming out in global growth and the combined effects of past liquidity injections feed into global commodity prices and inflation at exactly the same time, risking a repeat of what occurred at the beginning of 2011,” Barclays wrote in a research note.
Meanwhile, the International Monetray fund has again cut its economic growth forecast for the Philippines, citing low public spending and a slump in exports amid renewed global troubles.
Gross domestic product (GDP) growth is now expected to hit 3.7% this year before rising slightly to 4.2% in 2012, down from the 4.7% and 4.9% announced in September.
“The downward revision reflects the third-quarter outturn and to some extent the second-quarter outturn,” said Vivek Arora, assistant director of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific department, in a briefing following talks with local officials.
“GDP growth slowed in the first three quarters of 2011 owing to a fall in semiconductor exports and a temporary fall in public investment,” Arora also said in a statement.
The economy grew by only 3.6% as of September, well below the government’s 5-6% target and putting its even lower 4.5-5.5% forecast at risk.
Manila’s failure to push its infrastructure program has been blamed for 2011’s lackluster growth.
Increased public spending, added Arora, needs to be supported by higher revenues.
“The government’s efforts to strengthen tax administration is important and appropriate but additional efforts such as excise revenue and broadening tax base is needed,” he said.
Arora also said resilient domestic demand, which is primarily supported by remittances, would offset the effects of a continued weakness in exports.
The IMF’s new GDP forecasts came as Standard Chartered said Philippine growth would slow next year before picking up in 2013.
In its “Global Focus 2012: The Year Ahead” report released , the bank said the economy would grow by just 3.2% next year, slower than the forecast 3.8% for 2011. A recovery is expected starting 2013, with Standard Chartered setting a 5.3% forecast, before another slowdown to 5% in 2014.
The bank did not provide an explanation, only saying “We expect the Philippines to be more resilient than other Asian economies in 2012 as the Western economic outlook deteriorates further, thanks to strong domestic demand and investment.”
For Asia, Standard Chartered pegged growth at 7.3% this year, 6.5% next year, 7.5% in 2013 and 6.5% in 2014. Global output was forecast to expand by 3% this year, 2.2% next year, 3.6% in 2013 and 3.8% in 2014.
“In 2012, Standard Chartered expects a significant slowdown in the first half of the year because of the crisis in the West, slowing global growth to 2.2% for the full year,” the bank said.
The Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) forecasts that Asia’s GDP growth will slow to a still-robust 6.5 percent in 2012 from 7.3 percent in 2011. China is expected to cool significantly in the first few months of 2012 before rebounding, helped by a major policy boost. As a result, China’s growth will decelerate from 9.2 percent to 8.1 percent next year.
Growth in India, Asia’s third-largest economy, is expected to accelerate mildly to 7.4 percent in the fiscal year starting April 2012, from seven percent in the current financial year. Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, is forecast to slow to 5.8 percent from 6.5 percent.
Meanwhile, SCB sees 2012 as a year of a two-speed global economy. The bank sees a slowing global economy in 2012, with a fragile West and a resilient Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America.
The mounting crisis in the advanced economies is expected to cause the euro area (-1.5 percent) and the UK (-1.3 percent) to fall back into recession and US growth (+1.7 percent) to remain below-trend.
The world economy grew strongly in 2010, expanding 4.3 percent, before cooling in 2011, when it grew by around three percent. In 2012, Standard Chartered expects a significant slowdown in the first half of the year because of the crisis in the West, slowing global growth to 2.2 percent for the full-year.
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