Archive for ‘Services’

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30/05/2013

China designates service industry new growth engine

Xinhua: “China will step up efforts to build up its service industry to make it a new engine to power sustainable growth, Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday.

CHINA-BEIJING-LI KEQIANG-GLOBAL SERVICES FORUM (CN)

Speaking at a summit during the second Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services, Li stressed the important role of the service industry in job creation and economic upgrading.

“Increasing service supplies and improving service qualities will help unleash huge potential in domestic demand, and thus offer firm support for stable economic growth and structural optimization,” he said.

The latest emphasis on service trade is part of China’s efforts to drive growth in the sector to build an upgraded version of the economy.

In 2012, the service industry accounted for 44.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up 2.7 percentage points from a year earlier but still significantly below the share of 60 percent or more seen in many developed countries.

Li noted the key to spur growth in the area lies in reform and opening-up to remove institutional barriers.

“China will further open up the service industry, and pilot free trade experimental zones to tap development,” he said, adding that the government will seek balanced trade and encourage cross-border investments in the sector.

The premier stressed countries should abide by the win-win principles of rising against protectionism, removing trade barriers, and coordinating efforts to facilitate personnel flows, recognition of qualifications and a setting of standards.

Developed countries should lead the effort to open up their markets, while developing economies should be actively engaged in building the global trade mechanism and standards in the service industry, according to Li.

Under China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), the country aims to bring the sector’s proportion of GDP to 47 percent by 2015 and to make it a strategic focus for the country’s industrial restructuring and upgrading to ease reliance on traditional manufacturing.”

via China designates service industry new growth engine – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/19/chinas-growth-the-making-of-an-economic-superpower-dr-linda-yueh/

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05/05/2013

* China Still Has a Long Way to Go to Build a Service Economy

BusinessWeek: “The bad news keeps coming. Following two days of dismal numbers showing China’s manufacturing sector is slowing, now the service sector has disappointed. The not-so-happy takeaways: Don’t expect an economic recovery soon, and Beijing’s much sought-after goal of rebalancing still looks far off.

Shoppers pick up vegetables at a market in Beijing

On May 3, China’s National Bureau of Statistics and the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing announced that their nonmanufacturing purchasing managers’ index cooled to 54.5 in April, down from 55.6 the month before. Anything above 50 indicates expansion. The index tallies responses from 1,200 companies in 27 service industries, including retail, catering, construction, and transportation. A separate services index will be released by HSBC (HSBA) on May 6.

“The reading suggests that growth momentum will remain relatively soft” in the second quarter and that China’s economy “has shifted to a weaker growth trajectory,” Crédit Agricole CIB (ACA) economist Dariusz Kowalczyk said to Bloomberg News.

Beijing has set a goal of weaning its economy off excessive reliance on investment and exports and rebalancing toward a cleaner, more sustainable, services and consumption-driven GDP. That requires an end to artificially low interest rates, the undervalued yuan, and subsidized energy prices (three-quarters of energy goes to industry), as well as more government social spending, argue Nicholas Lardy and Nicholas Borst, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in a February policy brief.

“Higher lending rates lead to less capital-intensive economic development resulting in more job creation, higher household income, and ultimately higher levels of household consumption,” write Lardy and Borst. (Household consumption makes up a very low 37 percent of GDP today, while investment has exceeded 40 percent every year for the past decade). And “an appreciation of the currency would also decrease the profitability of the export-oriented manufacturing sector to the relative benefit of the service sector of the economy, which has languished since 2002,” the authors add.

via China Still Has a Long Way to Go to Build a Service Economy – Businessweek.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/19/chinas-growth-the-making-of-an-economic-superpower-dr-linda-yueh/

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01/05/2013

* China Grapples With Labor Shortage as Workers Shun Factories

The government’s plan to shift the economy from manufacturing and export to services and internal consumption may be a step in the right direction to re-balance the economy – see https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/19/chinas-growth-the-making-of-an-economic-superpower-dr-linda-yueh/.  But only if the move doesn’t “hollow out” manufacturing and export as a result. Otherwise, China will be treading a path Western nations have trod and are still treading to one of slow growth and increasing debt.

WSJ:

Second in a Series: China’s Changing Work Force

“For 15 years, Cui Haifeng worked in China’s manufacturing industry, stitching together leather to make soccer balls before working her way up to warehouse manager at a wood-flooring factory.

image

A young woman stands in the street as a hostess and advertisement for a hotpot restaurant in the shopping district Dongman in Shenzhen.

Last month the coal miner’s daughter traded a past of factory uniforms for a blouse and skirt, training as a customer-service representative for a life insurer in Guangzhou, southern China’s largest city.

The insurance industry “provides a more promising future and flexible working hours,” says Ms. Cui, 34 years old, who grew up in central China’s poor Henan province. “I want to earn more money to give my two kids a better and stable living environment.”

Her experience mirrors a transition sweeping China. This year, service-related positions—such as those in retail, travel and leisure—for the first time will account for more of the country’s gross domestic product than industrial-sector jobs, J.P. Morgan Chase JPM -1.90% predicts. Government figures show that the service sector created 37 million new jobs in the past five years, compared with 29 million in the industrial sector, which includes manufacturing, construction and mining.

Growing competition between the service and industrial sector for migrant workers like Ms. Cui is contributing to China’s tightest labor market in years, putting upward pressure on wages that already are rising in the double digits annually. That is leading apparel manufacturers to shift some production out of China, although concerns about worker safety in countries such as Bangladesh are forcing factory owners to consider the risks of doing so.

Demand for urban workers in China exceeded supply by a record amount in the first quarter, according to the government. Meanwhile, the average monthly income for migrant workers rose 12.1% from a year earlier.

“There is no let up in the labor shortage,” says Kelvin Lau, a senior economist Standard Chartered Bank. Manufacturers “are realizing that this is not a cyclical thing. It’s not about riding out a storm.”

In southern China’s industry-heavy Pearl River Delta region, nearly 90% of factory owners surveyed by Standard Chartered say the labor shortage will remain the same or get more severe this year.

Stronger growth for service-sector jobs signals that the government’s long-promised transition from an industrial economy focused on exports to one led by domestic demand is under way. Creating jobs in hair salons and insurance companies, instead of in steel mills and soccer-ball factories, helps fuel growth in the world’s second-largest economy.”

via China Grapples With Labor Shortage as Workers Shun Factories – WSJ.com.

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