The economies of East Asia will grow 8.8 percent this year but growth will taper off next year because of a weak global outlook and the phasing out of government stimulus programs, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said yesterday.
The Manila-based development bank said in a report that growth in developing East Asian countries will ease to 7.3 percent next year.
“With stimulus being withdrawn and the recovery intact, growth in 2011 should moderate as the post-recovery phase kicks in,” the report said.
The bank had said in September that it was upgrading its outlook for East Asia to 8.4 percent because of faster-than-expected growth from China.
Yesterday, it said it had raised its growth forecast for China for this year to 10.1 percent, but kept its prediction for next year steady at 9.1 percent.
China’s booming economy, the world’s second biggest, shows signs of cooling after a strong performance in the first half, with strong export growth slowing because of weaker demand. Industrial production and fixed asset investment are also slowing, the bank said.
However, consumer spending in areas such as retail sales is robust, suggesting domestic demand will remain strong, it said.
Among other countries, Singapore will be the star performer of this year, with growth of 14 percent, but will drop sharply to 5 percent next year, the report said.
The region’s growth faces several obstacles, the ADB said, including surging inflation in several countries. There is also the possibility of a weaker and longer-than-expected recovery in developed countries.
Protectionism is also a concern, as countries try to keep their currencies from strengthening too much, which would make their exports less affordable. That may escalate into trade wars as countries set up trade barriers to protect their international competitiveness and exports, the bank said.
The report covered China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar and Brunei.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts