Asia’s manufacturing industry finished last year with a modestly brighter outlook, with fewer economies signaling contraction at factories.
Purchasing managers’ indices (PMIs) for Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand last month all moved above 50, data from IHS Markit showed yesterday. Malaysia improved right to 50, the dividing line between expansion and contraction, while Indonesia stayed slightly below it.
“PMIs seem to have improved across the board in December and sentiment is likely to improve further following the positive developments on the trade front,” Singapore-based Oxford Economics India and Southeast Asia economics head Priyanka Kishore said.
The regional readings come as China’s manufacturing sector last month continued to expand output, bolstering views that the world’s second-largest economy is stabilizing.
China’s official manufacturing PMI remained at 50.2 and the sub-index of new orders for export rose into expansion for the first time since May 2018.
The Caixin Media and IHS Markit PMI showed that China’s manufacturing index edged down to 51.5 last month from 51.8 in November.
“Last year was so bad. We are going to have a cyclical recovery,” said Xia Le (夏樂), Hong Kong-based chief Asia economist at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA. “We can expect a cyclical recovery led by the exports sector and the manufacturing sector in the region.”
South Korea’s manufacturers — often viewed as a key barometer of global demand — enjoyed the strongest performance since April, with both output and new orders pushing into positive territory for the first time since October 2018.
India’s manufacturing PMI rose to 52.7 last month from 51.2 in November, backing a view that a nascent recovery in the economy was gathering steam. The pickup in activity was boosted by new orders, which grew at the fastest pace since July.
Global manufacturing has recovered somewhat from a slump in the middle of last year, as the impact of higher tariffs waned and as signs of a nascent rebound in the electronics sector emerged, which is especially critical to Asia’s export engines.
US President Donald Trump said that he would sign the first phase of a trade deal with China on Jan. 15, sealing an agreement that sees the Asian nation raising purchases of US farm goods in exchange for lower tariffs on some of its products.
“Survey data showed that businesses anticipate 2020 to be more positive, as signaled by higher input purchasing and stockpiling,” IHS Markit economist Joe Hayes said in a release. “Key to the reversal of the negative trend seen through most of 2019 seems to be new product launches, particularly in the automotive and electronic sectors.”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day