The World Bank is predicting robust economic growth of 6.3 percent this year in East Asia -- excluding Japan -- thanks to rising exports, low interest rates and investment in China, Vietnam and Thailand.
Fueled by recoveries in the US and Japan, demand for East Asian exports and a high-tech sector rebound, the growth would be the strongest since the global downturn of early 2000, World Bank Regional Vice President Jemal-ud-din Kassum said in a statement released yesterday.
The economic momentum began gathering last year and "by the end of 2003, the low- and middle-income countries of the region were growing at a combined rate of 7.6 percent, their fastest rate since 1996," he said, citing a twice-yearly report released in Washington.
That economic expansion, unseen since before the regional financial crisis of 1997-98, benefited the poor, lifting the incomes of some 49 million people above US$2 per day.
Much of the region's growth is attributable to China, which saw imports to fuel its manufactured-goods sector surge by 40 percent last year. First quarter estimates this year showed a steady upward trend.
China also remains a major destination for the relocation of global factories, creating jobs and boosting incomes at a sizzling pace. However, Chinese authorities are taking steps to rein in growth to prevent overheating, which could lead to a production glut.
Intra-regional trade has accounted for about 70 percent of East Asia's growth for the past three years, but the Bank said it expects this trade volume to diminish as China cools its economy.
"Although it is true that slower growth in China would hurt other economies in the region, our view is that the impact would be modest," Homi Kharas, World Bank chief economist for Asia and the Pacific, was quoted as saying.
The more significant risk to the region, he said, "comes not from slower growth in China but from a hard landing, which will take skillful and coordinated policymaking to avoid."
Net foreign and domestic investment in six countries -- China, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand -- was estimated to have jumped to around US$33 billion, from a net outflow of US$9 billion in 2002.
Foreign investment in the six countries was about US$60 billion last year, an increase of roughly US$1.5 billion over the previous year, with the overwhelming majority -- some US$53.5 billion -- going to China and just US$6.5 billion to the other five economies.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS