Hong Kong is set to end the year in the midst of a full-blown recession, its finance chief said yesterday, as spiraling interest rates join strict COVID-19 controls in hammering the economy.
“There is a very high chance for Hong Kong to record a negative GDP growth for this year,” Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan (陳茂波) told reporters, adding that interest rates were being raised “at a pace that was never seen in the past three decades.”
Hong Kong’s monetary policy moves with the US Federal Reserve because its currency, one of the cornerstones of its business hub reputation, is pegged to the US dollar.
Photo: AFP
The Fed’s hawkish rate hikes, aimed at curbing soaring inflation, come at an especially difficult time for Hong Kong, dampening sentiment when the economy is struggling.
Hong Kong is currently in a technical recession — recording two consecutive quarters of negative growth this year.
The government has adhered to a version of China’s “zero COVID” policy for more than two-and-a-half years, enforcing strict controls and mandatory quarantine for international arrivals.
Chan signaled his support for making travel and business easier.
“The aspects related to the pandemic need to continue to improve in order for us to see larger investments, because people are more cautious in a high-interest-rates environment,” he said.
Business leaders have long been warning that the COVID-19 controls, combined with Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on dissent, have made it harder to attract talent and cut off Hong Kong internationally, especially as rivals reopen.
Hong Kong has seen a net outflow of more than 200,000 people in the past two years, a record population drop.
“Hong Kong should be ahead of other Asian cities, but now there’s a feeling that we’re falling behind and being left isolated,” Eden Woon (翁以登), the new head of the Hong Kong American Chamber of Commerce told the South China Morning Post in an article published yesterday.
“There are people leaving and the problems of retaining talent — all these things add up together and need to be addressed,” he added.
While the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has no choice but to follow the Fed, major banks such as Standard Chartered PLC and HSBC Holdings PLC had resisted that pressure.
However, HSBC yesterday raised its prime lending rate in Hong Kong by 12.5 basis points to 5.125 percent, the bank’s first rise in four years.
Others are likely to follow suit. That could affect the territory’s once hot property sector, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc estimating that prices could slide by about 20 percent over the next four years.
Hong Kong also experienced a recession in 2019 when months of huge and sometimes violent democracy protests rocked the business district.
soft landing: The US’ rate-setting FOMC finds itself in a difficult situation as it seeks to address inflation through interest rate hikes while avoiding a recession The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a summer of mixed economic data, while leaving the door open to another hike if needed. The Fed has raised interest rates 11 times over the past 18 months, lifting its key lending rate to a level not seen for 22 years as it tackles inflation still stubbornly above its long-term target of 2 percent. Analysts and traders broadly expect the US central bank to hold rates steady on Wednesday in order to give policymakers more time to assess the health of the world’s largest economy. “We think
AI TREND: TSMC has been rapidly expanding capacity to meet a spike in demand for advanced packaging services, but still expects supplies to be tight for 18 months Arizona is in talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) about advanced chip packaging, state Governor Katie Hobbs said yesterday, which is crucial for the manufacturing of artificial intelligence (AI) chips. TSMC, which is building a US$40 billion chip factory in the US state, has not announced plans to build facilities for advanced chip packaging in the US. Advanced packaging processes stitch multiple chips together into a single device, lowering the added cost of more powerful computing. “Part of our efforts at building the semiconductor ecosystem is focusing on advanced packaging, so we have several things in the works around that
At a sprawling South Korean arms factory on Friday, a high-tech production line of robots and super-skilled workers were rapidly churning out weapons that could, eventually, play a role in Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion last year, the Hanwha Aerospace factory in the southern city of Changwon has expanded production capacity three times, workers told reporters, as South Korea ramps up arms exports while traditional behemoths like the US struggle with production shortages. Longstanding domestic policy bars Seoul from selling weapons into active conflicts, but even so it signed deals worth US$17.3 billion last year, including a US$12.7 billion agreement with NATO
Tailwinds: Blockbuster earnings at Nvidia Corp have sparked hopes of a tech sector boom; Taiwanese chipmakers are hopeful benefits will come to them too The worst could be over for the New Taiwan dollar as China’s economic recovery and a rebound in the chip industry will support the beleaguered currency, analysts said. The NT dollar is on course to weaken for a sixth month, the longest stretch since 2006, after foreign funds turned sour on its technology sector and risk sentiment deteriorated on slower growth in China. The tide seems to be turning now on nascent signs of stabilization in China’s economy — its biggest trading partner — following policy boosts. The yuan emerged as the best-performing Asian currency last week, followed by the Japanese yen
RSS