growth | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

27/02/2015

India in sweet spot of lower deficits, more growth – Economic Survey | Reuters

India can increase investment to drive economic growth without borrowing more, a key government report said on Friday, in an indication that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will stick to debt targets in his maiden full-year budget on Saturday.

Labourers work at the site of a monorail project in Mumbai February 27, 2015. REUTERS-Shailesh Andrade

The Economic Survey, the basis for Jaitley’s budget for the fiscal year starting April 1, forecast growth of 8.1 percent to 8.5 percent under new calculations that make India the world’s most dynamic big economy. The forecast marks an acceleration from growth of 7.4 percent in the current fiscal year.

“India has reached a sweet spot and … there is a scope for Big Bang reforms now,” the report said, adding the country was on course to hit double-digit growth rates.

Indian stocks rallied, with the benchmark Sensex gaining 1.7 percent, on hopes that Jaitley would deliver a business-friendly budget.

At first glance the growth outlook appears impressive. But it follows a big overhaul of India’s economic data, which previously showed the economy struggling to recover from its longest growth slowdown in a generation.

Other indicators of India’s economy are not as rosy as GDP data suggests. Earnings of the country’s top 100 companies shrank by 6 percent in the last quarter, private investment and consumer demand are weak and merchandise exports are falling.

The author of the report, economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, even said he was “puzzled” by the new GDP figures and played down suggestions that India’s $2 trillion economy was on a roll.

“India’s economy is still recovering, and not surging,” Subramanian told a news conference.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a landslide general election victory last May, capitalising on dissatisfaction among Indians over their economic lot and promising ‘better days’ of more jobs, investment and growth.

The report by Subramanian, a renowned development economist lured away from a Washington think tank by Modi, suggested the economy was now building momentum.

That, above all, reflects a near halving in international prices of oil, India’s biggest import.

As a result, the report predicts the current account deficit will be below 1 percent of GDP in 2015/16, a far cry from a figure of 4.7 percent in 2012/13 that preceded a currency crisis in India.

via India in sweet spot of lower deficits, more growth – Economic Survey | Reuters.

Posted in Economics, growth, India alert | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Arun Jaitley, Arvind Subramanian, Ashish Kumar, Asian Development Bank, Business Standard, Economic growth, finance minister, Gross domestic product, India, Narendra Modi

12/02/2015

Racing the elephant against the dragon | The Economist

IN 1991 India’s finance minister presented a budget to India’s parliament that would change the economic history of his country. His reforms dispensed with mounds of the red tape that reined in Indian growth, and opened up many industries to foreign capital. But India was a late-comer to the liberalisation game; China had been opening its economy since the 1970s and accelerated its efforts in the 1990s. China’s reforms have been the more successful; except for a brief period in 1999, the Chinese economy has consistently outperformed its smaller neighbour. But that picture may soon reverse.

Official statistics published on February 9th revealed that India’s GDP rose by 7.5% in 2014, a shade faster than China’s over the same period. Later this month Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is likely to push new reforms. India also enjoys a demographic advantage. Whereas China’s workforce began to shrink in 2012, more than half of India’s current population is younger than 25. India, rather than China, may henceforth be the symbol of rapid emerging-market growth.

via Daily chart: Racing the elephant against the dragon | The Economist.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Economics, GDP, growth, India alert | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Arun Jaitley, Barack Obama, Beijing, China, Economic growth, Economy of the People's Republic of China, Gross domestic product, India, International Monetary Fund, Narendra Modi

12/02/2015

India Passes China to Become World’s Fastest-Growing Economy – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Everyone from the World Bank to Goldman Sachs had predicted it wouldn’t happen for another two years but recent recalculations indicate that India has already dethroned China as the world’s fastest-growing big economy.

Late Monday, India’s statistics ministry surprised economists when it unveiled the new numbers for the growth of India’s gross domestic product. It ratcheted up India’s GDP growth figures using a new methodology that pegs expansion in Asia’s third-largest economy at 7.5% last quarter and 8.2% the quarter before that. Economists and the ministry, using the old methodology, had originally said growth was closer to 5.5% during those quarters.

While economists, investors and executives are still wondering how growth could have been so high during those quarters when other indicators suggested times were tough, the new official numbers mean that India outpaced China, taking the pole position as the fastest-growing major economy in the world.

India has been able to catch up because China’s growth has been slowing. The Middle Kingdom’s GDP expansion was 7.3% in both the third and fourth quarters of 2014. While there are smaller economies which may have had stronger growth, this puts India on top after decades driving in China’s slipstream.

Of course, China’s economy is still four times the size of India’s.

“There’s no comparison between these growth rates because of the size of the economy of China,” said Ashish Kumar, director general of the Central Statistics Office as he announced the new GDP growth numbers. “If this kind of growth continues and China continues to perform at a lower level, then still it will take 20 to 30 years to catch up.”

Still, if it can keep up this pace at least India will be gaining some ground. More importantly, a return to high growth might mean India is following in China’s footsteps and entering a take-off phase.

The South Asian nation needs to revamp its economy to help create more manufacturing jobs and savings if it wants to become the next China, said Frederic Neumann, an economist at HSBC in a recent report.

“That’s a challenging transformation,” he said. “India may never quite match the rapid ascent of China, but even at a slightly slower speed it will start to make waves.”

via India Passes China to Become World’s Fastest-Growing Economy – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Economics, GDP, growth, India alert | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Arun Jaitley, Capital Economics, China, Economic growth, Europe, finance minister, Gross domestic product, India, International Monetary Fund, World Bank

03/02/2015

Shanghai’s economy: GDP apostasy | The Economist

IN AN officially atheist country, one form of worship actively encouraged by the Chinese government has been devotion to GDP. From village chiefs to national leaders, presiding over fast economic growth has been the surest path to career success. Targets for GDP have formed the centrepiece of annual budgets, with officials convinced that failure to achieve them would lead to soaring unemployment and even chaos. Officials fiddle the numbers—massaging them up when growth is too slow and down when it is too fast—but basic faith in GDP as the most powerful expression of their aims and accomplishments has been unwavering.

So the break with tradition was something akin to Vatican II, when on January 25th the Shanghai government announced its policy plans for 2015 and chose to omit a GDP target. While Yang Xiong, the mayor, pledged that the city would “maintain steady growth”, he gave no indication of what that might mean in numbers. In recent years China’s 31 provinces and mega-cities have steadily lowered their GDP targets as the economy has slowed. At least two-thirds missed their goals last year, a sign that such targets have become less important than in the past. But Shanghai is the first to dispense with a target altogether. The city’s Communist Party chief, Han Zheng, is a member of the ruling Politburo, so the omission was a powerful signal.

China’s leaders are still very keen on GDP. When growth slowed sharply early last year officials ramped up spending on infrastructure, a spending boost that helped the central government to come in just one-tenth of a percentage-point shy of its growth target of 7.5% last year. But leaders have been calling for more attention to economic quality rather than just quantity. They want to end an investment-heavy approach that has damaged the environment and led to a dangerous build-up of debt. Ending a fixation on GDP targets will be a great help.

With no such target to cling to, or to blush at when missed, Shanghai officials now have more scope to work on other things. Transforming the city’s free-trade zone, much hyped but little used, into a real testing ground for financial reforms, as was initially intended, is a priority. “Officials will feel less pressure to meet short-term investment objectives,” says Zhu Ning of the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance. Mr Yang, the mayor, says Shanghai wants to create 500,000 new jobs this year. That will only be possible if the economy remains strong. But quite what level of GDP is needed to foster such job creation is uncertain, especially as labour-intensive services come to dominate the city’s economy. So it is sensible to follow the example of other countries and focus more on employment levels than GDP.

For China as a whole, it is too soon to expect an end to GDP targeting. It will remain an important policy tool for guiding and evaluating officials, especially in poorer parts of the country where faster growth is needed to narrow the gap with coastal cities. Tibet is shooting for 12% growth this year, the same target as it set, and achieved, in 2014. But Shanghai’s example proves that, even in the grand temple of China, the cult of GDP is losing adherents.

via Shanghai’s economy: GDP apostasy | The Economist.

UBS economist says 2015 China GDP growth to slow to 6.8%

Posted in China alert, Economics, GDP, growth | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, China GDP Growth, Economic growth, economy, GDP target, Gross domestic product, Han Zheng, Huangpu District, New Year, Shanghai, target, The Bund, Yang Xiong (politician)

31/01/2015

China’s Provinces Lower Their Sights After Most Miss Economic Targets – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Most Chinese provinces missed their economic growth targets for last year, according to figures published Friday, in what would only recently have been an unthinkable event but is another sign of the economy’s rapid deceleration.

Out of 31 provinces and province-like administrative regions, 27 missed their marks, while one met its target and three have yet to report their performance, according to the Beijing News, a state-run newspaper.

Growth targets have been seen for decades as ironbound objectives, by Chinese officialdom, from Beijing on down. Provinces have typically competed to outdo the national target—which has ranged around 7% to 8%–setting their own goals higher and then making sure they exceed them, and with good reason: Growth factors heavily in the performance assessments for mayors, governors and other officials seeking promotions to higher office.

via China’s Provinces Lower Their Sights After Most Miss Economic Targets – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, Economics, GDP, growth | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Anhui, Beijing, China, Chinese provinces, Economic growth, economic growth targets, Environmental degradation, Growth targets, national target, Smog, target

31/01/2015

India’s economic growth revised up by almost 50 percent | Reuters

India’s economy grew almost 50 percent faster in 2013/14 than earlier thought, the government said on Friday after changing a formula, a reminder of the challenges that unreliable statistics present to Indian policymakers.

Kashmiri farmers thrash paddy crop in Srinagar October 22, 2013. REUTERS/Danish Ismail/Files

In the year leading up to the elections that brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power last May, the economy grew 6.9 percent, not the 4.7 percent reported earlier, chief statistician T.C.A. Anant told reporters.

Modi’s campaign succeeded partly because of the widespread feeling that his predecessors from the Congress party had plunged the economy into the country’s longest deceleration in growth in a generation.

The revised formula, showing a faster recovery, includes under-represented and informal sectors as well as items such as smartphones and LED television sets in gross domestic product.

That could boost India’s growth figure in the year ending in March 2015, which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has projected to be around 5.5 percent.

Some in government predict the change will

via Economic growth revised up by almost 50 percent | Reuters.

Posted in Economics, GDP, growth, India alert | 1 Comment »

Tags: Basis point, Bharatiya Janata Party, Economy of India, India, India’s economy, Narendra Modi, New Delhi, Raghuram Rajan, Repurchase agreement, Reserve Bank of India, Run batted in

28/01/2015

China plans to set 2015 growth target at ‘around 7 percent’ – sources | Reuters

China plans to cut its growth target to around 7 percent in 2015, its lowest goal in 11 years, sources said, as policymakers try to manage slowing growth, job creation and pursuing reforms intended to make the economy more driven by market forces.

The growth target, which is set to be announced by Premier Li Keqiang at the annual parliament session in March, was endorsed by top party leaders and policymakers at a closed-door Central Economic Conference in December, said a number of people with knowledge of the outcome of meeting who spoke to Reuters.

The target, which is in line with market expectations, has not been previously reported.

“This year’s economic growth target will be around 7 percent, but the 7 percent should be the bottom line,” said one of the sources, an influential economist who advises the government.

via Exclusive: China plans to set 2015 growth target at ‘around 7 percent’ – sources | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, Economics, GDP, growth | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, China plans, Deflation, Economic growth, Economy of the People's Republic of China, growth target, Hong Kong, HSBC, Li Keqiang, Premier Li Keqiang, Premier of the People's Republic of China

31/12/2014

China Adds the Equivalent of Malaysia’s Economy to its Output – Businessweek

China’s economy officially just got bigger. More important, it also became more balanced, a longtime priority of Chinese leaders and good news for the world.

China's Revised GDP Shows Rebalancing Success With Bigger Service Sector

China’s GDP revision, announced by the national bureau of statistics on its website today, shows the economy in 2013 was 1.92 trillion yuan ($303.8 billion) larger than previously thought. That’s 3.4 percent more and equivalent to adding the Malaysian economy to Chinese output, as Bloomberg News and others have noted. That puts last year’s GDP at about $9.61 trillion.

The 2014 figure will also be revised upward, although by not much, the statistics bureau says, probably early next year. And planned changes to how Beijing counts research and development costs and housing, will likely boost the size of the economy.

The revision follows the release earlier this week of data from China’s last economic census. Almost 3 million census takers polled more than 10 million companies and 60 million individual-owned private enterprises across the country for a three-month period last spring. The two previous censuses saw GDP revised up by 16.8 percent in 2004 and 4.4 percent in 2008.

“The relatively small upwards adjustment [this time], compared with previous [census] revisions, won’t make a huge difference to how the economy is viewed or to key metrics, such as China’s debt to GDP ratio,” writes Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at London’s Capital Economics, in a research note today. “Nonetheless, it does provide some positive news on rebalancing.”

The census revealed a bigger service sector, which in 2013 made up 46.9 percent of GDP, up from 46.1 percent before. Meanwhile, China’s often resource-wasting, pollution-generating industrial sector takes up a slightly smaller share of the economy, falling to 43.7 percent from 43.9 percent before the census.

via China Adds the Equivalent of Malaysia’s Economy to its Output – Businessweek.

China revises up 2013 economy size

Posted in China alert, Economics, GDP, growth | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, Capital Economics, China, China’s GDP, Economic growth, Economy of the People's Republic of China, Gross domestic product, Malaysian economy, national bureau of statistics, National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China, Tertiary sector of the economy, United States, World Bank

14/12/2014

China Has a ‘New Normal’ Too – Businessweek

China’s Communist Party leaders are known for their turgid jargon, much of it dating back decades to when Mao Zedong still dominated dogma. But sometimes, apparently, they feel the need to borrow from less hoary, more capitalistic sources.

A technology and manufacturing facility in Shenzhen, China

That is what Xi Jinping has done with his “new normal” theory of the Chinese economy, now getting lots of play in the state media. The phrase, first popularized by Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco, the giant Newport Beach (Calif) bond fund manager, referred of course to the lackluster economic growth following the global financial crisis.

Earlier this year Xi used the then-already tired cliché while on a May inspection trip to Henan, the province southwest of the Chinese capital. Then it got a real airing during a speech he gave at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum last month. “A new normal of China’s economy has emerged with several notable features,” Xi said, speaking before more than 1,500 global business executives in Beijing, reported the Party-owned Global Times on Nov. 10.

“First, the economy has shifted gear from the previous high speed to a medium-to-high-speed growth. Second, the economic structure is constantly improved and upgraded. Third, the economy is increasingly driven by innovation instead of input and investment,” the paper wrote, paraphrasing Xi.

Translation: Yes, the economy will not grow at the hyper rates all of you had gotten used to—still, no need for alarm. We are making the transition to a healthier, more sustainable version, this one driven more by consumption, services, and, oh yes, innovation. “The ‘new normal’ theory elaborated by Chinese President Xi Jinping would be one of the hallmarks to be engraved in history,” the Global Times ambitiously predicted.

“We must understand the new normal, adjust to the new normal, and develop under the new normal—coming to terms with the new normal will be the ‘main logic’ for economic growth for some time,” the official Xinhua News Agency wrote today, in a report on the three-day, high-level Central Economic Work Conference that closed Thursday. “The new normal has not changed the strategic importance of a period that will see great achievements,” it promised.

via China Has a ‘New Normal’ Too – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Economics, GDP, growth | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, Beijing, China, China’s economy, communist party of china, Cultural Revolution, Economic growth, Gang of Four, Mao Zedong, Pacific Investment Management Co., Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, Xi JinPing, Zhou Yongkang

19/11/2014

Why India is doing better than most emerging markets | The Economist

INVESTORS have fallen out of love with emerging markets. Since the start of last year emerging-market stocks have trailed their rich-world peers. Currencies are falling. Worst-hit is the Russian rouble, which has fallen by 30% against the dollar this year. The currencies of other biggish emerging markets, such as Brazil, Turkey and South Africa, have also weakened. For such economies growth is harder to come by. The IMF recently cut its forecasts for emerging markets by more than for rich countries. But India is a notable exception to the general pessimism. Its stockmarket has touched new highs. The rupee is stable. And the IMF nudged up its 2014 growth forecast for India to 5.8%. That figure is still quite low: growth rates of 8-9% have been more typical. But in comparison with others it is almost a boom. Why is India doing better than most emerging markets?

In part optimism about India owes to its newish government. In May Narendra Modi’s Baratiya Janata Party (BJP) won a thumping victory in elections on a pro-growth platform. Since then the BJP has strengthened its position in some key states. So far reform has been piecemeal. Procedures for government approvals have been streamlined. The powers of labour inspectors have been curbed. Civil servants now work harder. That has been enough to sustain hopes of further and bigger reforms. Yet much of the continued enthusiasm about India is down to luck. The currents that sway the global economy presently—the dollar’s strength; slowdown in China; aggressive money-printing in Japan; stagnation in the euro zone and falling oil prices—are less harmful to India than to most emerging markets.

Start with the dollar, which has been buoyed by a resilient American economy and the prospect of interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve. Past episodes of rising interest rates and dollar strength (for instance in the early 1980s or mid-1990s) have not been kind to emerging markets. Bond yields rise and currencies fall as capital is drawn back to America. India has a bit less to fear from such a rush to the exits; its bond markets are tricky for foreigners to enter in the first place. India is also less harmed by slowdown in China, as only around 5% of its exports go there. It is not part of China’s supply-chain, which takes in much of South-East Asia. Nor is it a big exporter of industrial commodities, as Brazil is. And a weaker yen in response to quantitative easing by the Bank of Japan hurts Asia’s manufacturing exporters more than service-intensive India. The misery in the euro zone is of greater concern to Europe’s trading partners in Turkey and Russia than to faraway India. And the fall in crude-oil prices that hurts oil exporters, such as Russia and Nigeria, is a boon to a big oil importer like India. Indeed the deflation that is stalking large parts of the world is helpful to India, which has suffered from high inflation.

India is not impervious to bad news. Some of its recent economic data have looked a little soggy. Exports slumped in October. Car sales have fallen for two consecutive months and there is little sign yet of a meaningful recovery in business investment. This explains, in part, why there have been growing calls (including from the finance minister) for the central bank to cut interest rates soon in response to a drop in consumer-price inflation. The troubles in other emerging markets ought to counsel caution. Any sign that policymakers might be ditching discipline in favour of quick fixes might see India fall from investors’ favour. But for the time being, it is riding high.

via The Economist explains: Why India is doing better than most emerging markets | The Economist.

Posted in Economics, GDP, growth, India alert | 1 Comment »

Tags: Abenomics, Brazil, China, David Cameron, Emerging markets, Federal Reserve System, India, Shinzō Abe, United States

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Archive for ‘growth’

India in sweet spot of lower deficits, more growth – Economic Survey | Reuters

Racing the elephant against the dragon | The Economist

India Passes China to Become World’s Fastest-Growing Economy – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Shanghai’s economy: GDP apostasy | The Economist

China’s Provinces Lower Their Sights After Most Miss Economic Targets – China Real Time Report – WSJ

India’s economic growth revised up by almost 50 percent | Reuters

China plans to set 2015 growth target at ‘around 7 percent’ – sources | Reuters

China Adds the Equivalent of Malaysia’s Economy to its Output – Businessweek

China Has a ‘New Normal’ Too – Businessweek

Why India is doing better than most emerging markets | The Economist

Tags

Creative Commons

Archives

Meta

Blog Stats

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Archive for ‘growth’

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

Tags

Creative Commons

Archives

Meta

Blog Stats