Flaws of export-led Asia growth model surface

Flaws of export-led Asia growth model surface

BEIJING

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

THE deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression is likely to do more than years of international prodding to wean China and its Asian neighbours off their export-led model of economic growth.

Washington's US$700 billion mortgage bailout will reshape the US financial industry, perhaps for a generation or two, in ways that are not yet clear. The fallout for the rest of the world will be far-reaching.

But for Asia, one consequence of the turmoil is already inescapable. After living beyond its means for many years, America will have to rebuild its savings, so consumption will fall. Exports to the US from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and now South Korea are already weakening. The need to take up the slack is urgent.

"I think this is a wake-up call for China," said Stephen Roach, the chairman of Morgan Stanley in Asia.

Roach expects US growth to slow from an average of 3.2 per cent over the past 13 years to no more than two per cent over the next two to three years. Consumption growth is likely to halve to around two per cent as debt burdens are pared back.

As economic weakness spreads to Europe and Japan, the hit to China's exports could cut its growth rate from around 10 per cent now already down from 11.9 per cent in 2007 to about eight per cent, in Roach's view.

"It just underscores the fact that when you have a vibrant but very large export sector, when you have an external shock and you don't have a lot of dynamism on the internal demand side, you have greater risks to growth," he said at the weekend during a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, northern China.

Central banks in the region are already responding. Taiwan, China, Australia and New Zealand have all cut interest rates.

Easing monetary policy is all well and good, especially as inflationary risks are receding. Many countries can also afford to resort to fiscal stimulus.

But stoking domestic demand also requires long-haul reforms that sometimes shake the very foundations of an economy such as scrapping deterrents to foreign investment in Japan, ending protection for favoured groups in Malaysia or subjecting dominant firms to more competition in the Philippines and Hong Kong.

These are politically arduous tasks at the best of times. That's why economists wanted governments to get cracking on them while the going was good.

Countries instead largely shirked the challenge, content to rely on export-led growth by holding down their exchange rates.

Quite apart from hindering the needed rebalancing of the global economy, an undervalued currency acts as a tax on domestic demand, Hong Liang and Yu Song, economists who follow China for Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, noted in a report. The result is evident in the case of China, where household consumption last year came to just 35.3 per cent of gross domestic product an unprecedented low in peacetime for a major country.

This means that a lopsided economy has scant domestic demand to fall back on as the global downturn deepens. "The real costs of China's resistance to yuan appreciation are now becoming more apparent," Liang and Song wrote.

So what is to be done?

For the region more broadly, a precondition of stronger domestic demand is a more efficient financial system. For too long, Asia has in effect contracted out to Wall Street the job of managing its excess savings.

If Asia's surpluses now shrink and it keeps more money at home, the region will have to deepen its bond markets at last and, ironically, promote more financial innovation so capital can be invested productively.

With complex, new-fangled debt instruments now discredited, making the case for financial liberalisation will be tough.

Regulators in Asia will now be extremely cautious about approving any new forms of securitisation, said James Seward, a financial sector specialist at the World Bank.

Reuters

Brunei plays important role in regional economy, says US envoy

Brunei plays important role in regional economy, says US envoy

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

THE United States Ambassador to Brunei, William E Todd yesterday welcomed the launch of US negotiations to join the Trans Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) agreement. The agreement will allow the US to join the free trade pact that exists between Brunei, New Zealand, Chile and Singapore (the P4 group) whose broad objectives is to tear down trade barriers among participants within a decade.

In the press statement, Ambassador Todd said that he agrees with Ambassador Susan Schwab in seizing the opportunity to build on the economic strength of all partnership nations.

"Our nations are all leaders in traded goods and services and now is an optimal time to focus on enhanced economic development and stability for all of our economies," said the Ambassador.

He expressed his satisfaction in knowing that through the TPP "we (the US) can demonstrate our intentions to continue to actively engage in the Asia Pacific region." The Ambassador added that he plans to work closely with His Majesty's Government on these efforts.

Noting that the TPP could provide a foundation for and build momentum towards a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, Ambassador Todd said: "Ultimately, the objective is to expand the membership of the Agreement to other nations that share our vision of free and fair trade".

Todd also highlighted that the Asia Pacific region accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the world GDP, adding "I believe Brunei plays an important role in regional economy as we anticipate growth to remain high throughout the next five years."

The Ambassador also noted that with the recent announcement of the TPP Free Trade Negotiations, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) will be a critical issue and in a follow-up to the successful 'Conference on Effective Practices in IPR' held in Brunei last June, another workshop has been conducted to emphasise the enforcement and practises of IPR issues of both the US and Brunei. "The workshop is an excellent example of close cooperation between the Government of Brunei and the US," said Ambassador Todd, highlighting his embassy's continuous support on the efforts of Customs and Border Protection, the US Trade Representative and the Brunei Government to protect IPR in the country. (SRH1)

The Brunei Times

Global food situation at crossroads: IRRI

Global food situation at crossroads: IRRI

Precious commodity: Filipino gene bank technician Bernardo Mercado shows rice samples from Thailand and Myanmar to be stored inside the International Rice Research Institute's headquarters in Los Banos, Laguna province, south of Manila. Picture: EPA
MANILA

Monday, September 22, 2008

SAGGING farm productivity and increasing demand have brought the world to a crossroads in terms of food security, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said yesterday.

Failure to act now could lead to a long-term crisis that will make this year's price spikes seem a mere blip on the radar, said IRRI, the world's leading rice research and training centre which is based outside Manila.

"Declining agricultural productivity and continued growing demand have brought the world food situation to a crossroads," it said in a statement on its website.

IRRI called on governments to reinvest in agriculture including research into improved technologies, infrastructure development, as well as training and education of agricultural scientists.

"Growth in agricultural productivity is the only way to ensure that people have access to enough affordable food," said Elizabeth Woods, the chairwoman of IRRI's board of trustees.

"Achieving this is a long-term effort. A year or two of extra funding for agricultural research is not enough," she said.

Woods said the annual rice yield growth rate has dropped to less than one per cent in recent years, compared with 2.3 per cent between 1967 and 90.

Based on projected income and population growth, annual productivity growth of almost 1.5 per cent will be needed at least until 2020.

IRRI's warning coincided with the release of a report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation which said higher food prices are partly to blame for the number of hungry people growing by 75 million to about 925 million worldwide.

The Asian Development Bank recently said that for Asian countries to prevent future food price surges, the agricultural sector needs wide-scale structural reform.

The ADB has increased the poverty level from US$1 a day to US$1.35 a day, meaning that millions more people are now considered impoverished.

The price of rice, one of the world's staple grains, spiked at more than US$1,000 a tonne in May before settling at around US$700 a tonne still double the price of a year ago, IRRI said.AFP

US crisis may snag Asia financial reforms

US crisis may snag Asia financial reforms
WASHINGTON

Monday, September 22, 2008

THE American financial crisis is expected to delay capital market reforms in China and other developing Asian economies stunned by the colossal damage unleashed by complex financial contracts on the United States, experts say.

Flush with cash reserves, many developing Asian nations have been prodded by Western financial institutions to deepen their capital markets by introducing sophisticated financial derivatives to hedge against various risks.

But as derivatives tied to housing mortgages-backed securities were blamed for the American turmoil whose losses could reach US$1 trillion, Asian economies would tread more cautiously in adopting complex financial trading contracts, the experts said.

"I think that is going to be the takeaway by the bank regulator in China, for example," Asian expert Nicholas Lardy of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics told AFP.

"I think they are going to say to themselves, 'We were right to resist the opening up of our financial system to Western financial institutions that wanted to add in supposedly more sophisticated products into our market,"' he said.

China has not introduced any of the risk-carrying exotic derivative products, such as the unregulated credit default swap contracts, which are at the center of the current American financial chaos.

These private contracts allow companies to trade bets on whether a borrower will default.

A top new player in the swaps game was troubled American insurance giant AIG bailed out last week by the central bank following a similar rescue of two debt-ridden mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Top investment house Lehman Brothers, however, filed for bankruptcy in the biggest corporate debt default in history, sending global markets reeling.

"The sudden downfall of several prominent global institutions has authorities concerned about ripple effects and is prompting a reassessment of the pace of China's financial sector reforms," Jing Ulrich, chairman of China equities at JPMorgan, wrote in a report last week, according to the Washington Post. The reforms were meant to give market forces more sway.

Asian economies were alerted to the risks of derivative trading way back in 1995 when a British trader's wrong bets in Japanese stock futures in Singapore led to the high-profile collapse of British bank Barings.

Two years later, the region plunged into a severe financial crisis resulting from a currency meltdown blamed by some on hedge funds.

The US crisis has exposed systemic missteps by banking overseers, securities regulators, the US Congress and corporate executives all of whom underestimated the risks of leveraging and now are paying the price, the Washington Post quoted securities officials as saying.

"What is unique is that during that time, there was a sense that a well regulated financial system, like the US, would never experience a kind of trouble that Asia experienced in the 1990s and unfortunately that has proven to be the case," Brad Setser, a former US Treasury official, told AFP.

"Maybe the US system wasn't as well regulated as many thought and certainly it has taken on an enormous amount of risk and sees enough in ways that have uncomfortable parallels to the Asian crisis," said Setser, now with the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank.

The Asian crisis roiled banks which took enormous risks by financing high level of investments often using foreign currency denominated loans. It forced governments to take over the institutions by injecting public money to keep the banking system from completely collapsing.

Rather than venturing into complicated financial products with hidden risks, Asian nations should give priority to adopting key financial reforms vital to fueling their rapidly growing economies, experts said.

In China, for example, financial reforms such as interest rate liberalisation, a more market determined exchange rate and a more developed "plain vanilla" domestic bond market are critical, Lardy said.

"I think the main lesson for everybody is leverage is risky," he said. "People had forgotten that, especially with the low cost of money in the last few years."AFP

Anatomy of a financial crisis

Anatomy of a financial crisis

Fundamental cause: A Indonesian broker during a trade session at Indonesia Stock Exchange in Jakarta yesterday. Asian stock markets plunged on Tuesday after the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused a meltdown on Wall Street, as governments held emergency meetings to stave off a wider financial crisis. Picture: EPA
BARRY EICHENGREEN
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

Saturday, September 20, 2008

GETTING out of our current financial mess requires understanding how we got into it in the first place. The fundamental cause, according to the likes of John McCain, was greed and corruption on Wall Street. Though not one to deny the existence of such base motives, I would insist that the crisis has its roots in key policy decisions stretching back over decades.

In the United States, there were two key decisions. The first, in the 1970s, deregulated commissions paid to stockbrokers. The second, in the 1990s, removed the Glass-Steagall Acts restrictions on mixing commercial and investment banking. In the days of fixed commissions, investment banks could make a comfortable living booking stock trades. Deregulation meant competition and thinner margins. Elimination of Glass-Steagall then allowed commercial banks to encroach on the investment banks other traditional preserves.

In response, investment banks branched into new businesses like originating and distributing complex derivative securities. They borrowed money and put it to work to sustain their profitability. This gave rise to the first causes of the crisis: the originate-and-distribute model of securitisation and the extensive use of leverage.

It is important to note that these were unintended consequences of basically sensible policy decisions. Other things being equal, deregulation allowed small investors to trade stocks more cheaply, which made them better off. But other things were not equal. In particular, the fact that investment banks, which were propelled into riskier activities by these policy changes, were entirely outside the regulatory net was a recipe for disaster.

Similarly, eliminating Glass-Steagall was fundamentally sensible. Conglomerates allow financial institutions to diversify their business, and combining with commercial banks allows investment banks to fund their operations using relatively stable deposits instead of fickle money markets. This model has proven its viability in Europe over a period of centuries, and its advantages are evident in the US even now with Bank of Americas purchase of Merrill Lynch.

But conglomeratisation takes time. In the short run, Merrill, like the other investment banks, was allowed to double up its bets. It remained entirely outside the purview of the regulators. As a stand-alone entity, it was then vulnerable to market swings. A crisis sufficient to threaten the entire financial system was required to precipitate the inevitable conglomeratisation.

The other element in the crisis was the set of policies that gave rise to global imbalances. The Bush administration cut taxes. The Fed cut interest rates in response to the 2001 recession. Financial innovation, meanwhile, worked to make credit even cheaper and more widely available. This, of course, is just the story of subprime mortgages in another guise. The result was increased US spending and the descent of measured household savings into negative territory.

Of equal importance were the rise of China and the decline of investment in Asia following the 1997-1998 financial crisis. With China saving nearly 50% of its GNP, all that money had to go somewhere. Much of it went into US treasuries and the obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This propped up the dollar and reduced the cost of borrowing for US households, encouraging them to live beyond their means. It also created a more buoyant market for the securities of Freddie and Fannie, feeding the originate-and-distribute machine.

Again, these were not outright policy mistakes. Lifting a billion Chinese out of poverty is arguably the single most important event in our lifetimes. The fact that the Fed responded quickly prevented the 2001 recession from worsening. But there were unintended consequences. The failure of US regulators to tighten capital and lending standards when abundant capital inflows combined with loose Fed policies ignited a furious credit boom. The failure of China to move more quickly to encourage higher domestic spending commensurate with its higher incomes added fuel to the fire.

Now, a bloated financial sector is being forced to retrench. Some outcomes, like the marriage of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, are happier than others, like the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. But, either way, there will be downsizing. Foreign central banks are suffering capital losses on their unthinking investments. As they absorb their losses on US treasury and agency securities, capital flows toward the US will diminish. The US current-account deficit and the Asian surplus will shrink. US households will have to start saving again.

The one anomaly is that the dollar has strengthened in recent weeks. With the US no longer viewed as a supplier of high-quality financial assets, one would expect the dollar to have weakened. The dollars strength reflects the knee-jerk reaction of investors rushing into US treasuries as a safe haven. It is worth remembering that the same thing happened in August 2007, when the sub-prime crisis erupted. But once investors realised the extent of US financial problems, the rush into treasuries subsided, and the dollar resumed its decline. Now, as investors recall the extent of US financial problems, we will again see the dollar resume its decline.

Emphasising greed and corruption as causes of the crisis leads to a bleak prognosis. We are not going to change human nature. We cannot make investors less greedy. But an emphasis on policy decisions suggests a more optimistic outlook. Unintended consequences cannot always be prevented. Policy mistakes may not always be avoidable. But they at least can be corrected. That, however, requires first looking more deeply into the root causes of the problem.

Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.Project Syndicate

Foreign workers more capable, say Bruneians

Foreign workers more capable, say Bruneians

Better service: Bruneians feel the foreign workers provide better services because they are here to earn money. Picture: BT/ Saifulizam
QISTINA RANGGA
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Thursday, September 18, 2008

FOREIGN front-line staff provide better services than their local co-workers, many Bruneians said. Diana Mohammad of Kuala Belait who visited the local hospital recently, said that foreign nurses are more caring compared to locals.

"I've been to the hospital several times over the years and usually I find the foreign nurses more caring and they seem to know more of what they're doing," said the 25-year-old.

Michael Shim, 37, said: "I went to this store to buy a pair shoes for my wife and the shop assistant, whom I believe is from Indonesia, took the trouble to call up its various outlets to see if they had the exact pair I wanted. Some Bruneians would just say no stock." Safura Hj Lamit, a local secondary school teacher said that she finds the foreign service staff more professional. "Unlike many foreign workers, some locals appear clueless sometimes," she said.

Computer technician Mia Azlan, 24, who went shopping at a popular shoes outlet in Kg Kiulap, said that some locals are reluctant to serve their customers.

"I was the only customer there and was standing there with a shoe in my hand, looking at five local assistants who only made a move to attend to my needs when I said something. Even that, it seemed insincere on their part, " she said.

Ampuan Hassan, 30, said that foreigners provide better services because they are here to earn money.

"The prospect of coming home empty-handed is not an option for them unlike many locals," he said, adding that many locals working in the service industry are on a temporary basis and many come from well-to-do families.

Another local entrepreneur who did not want to be named said that some foreigners do not mind working longer hours as they are single and their families are abroad.

The 29-year-old entrepreneur said that many foreign workers take pride in what they do and do their work well.

Nur Hafizah Hj Abu Bakar, who works for an IT solutions company, feels that the locals need to be given more training on serving customers better.

"There's nothing better than being served by your own nationals."

Last year, the wholesale and retail trade industry employed some 10,181 foreigners; the personal and social services industry (salons, tailors, barbers, car workshops) employed 7,716, while the hotel, restaurant and cafe industry employed 6,751 foreign workers.

However, it was recorded that there was an increase of 0.5 per cent in the number of locals employed in the personal and social services industry.

In addition, the number of locals employed in the wholesale and retail trade industry fell to 39.1 per cent compared to 40 per cent the previous year.

The Brunei Times

Financial storm could hit Asia economies

Published on The Brunei Times (http://www.bt.com.bn/en)
Financial storm could hit Asia economies

Rupiah bundle: Workers remove stacks of rupiah notes in a state bank in Jakarta on Monday. Picture: Reuters
MANILA/HONG KONG

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

ASIA'S developing economies, the fastest growing in the world, should expand by 7.5 per cent this year but financial convulsions in the West could hurt growth, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) yesterday said.

"The risks to Asia today are much, much higher than what we had projected in April," Ifzal Ali, ADB chief economist, told journalists in Hong Kong.

The biggest risk was that the US financial crisis would affect G3 economies indefinitely, hurting Asian exports and financial markets. "If the impact goes beyond 2009 that will be very, very negative for Asia."

For now though, Asia still needed to tackle inflation rather than focus on growth, Ali said.

The Manila-based bank's latest 2008 growth forecast, worked out before Lehman Brothers collapsed and Merrill Lynch was sold in the worst financial crisis in the US in decades, was only slightly lower than an 7.6 per cent estimate in April.

But it is the slowest growth in the region since 2003.

"The silver lining so far has been that US growth though slower has held up. The turmoil of the last eight days points to clear and present danger that growth in the United States could slip very, very sharply," Ali said.

The ADB also slashed the 2009 growth forecast to 7.2 per cent from 7.8 per cent as it said the global slowdown, high inflation and tight monetary policy would cut back on expansion.

The ADB's Asian Development Outlook Update said Asia's financial systems were healthy and had so far been relatively inured to the US credit crunch.

"If the subprime crisis worsens significantly, Asia is bound to suffer much more serious financial effects, including an abrupt reversal of the capital inflows that have held up well so far," the bank said in the report.

The ADB said average inflation in Asia-Pacific was likely to reach 7.8 per cent in 2008, a sharp increase from a forecast of 5.1 per cent made in April. Next year, inflation is likely to come in at six per cent. Oil prices would average US$109 in 2009, it said.

"Inflation is the greatest risk in emerging economies in Asia," ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda told Reuters last week, adding that rather than supporting growth, the top policy challenge was inflation.

The ADB kept its 2008 growth forecast for China, the world's fastest growing big economy, at 10 per cent and said it was one of few countries with room to ease monetary policy.

China's move on Monday to cut interest rates for the first time in six years showed it was refocusing on protecting growth.

But Ali said the cut's small magnitude, just 27 basis points, and the fact that a cut in the reserve requirement would not apply to the biggest banks, showed policy easing would be slow.

The ADB said growth in India was likely to expand only at 7.4 per cent in 2008 against the April forecast of eight per cent. In 2009, China is seen growing 9.5 per cent and India seven per cent.

The ADB also said Asian central banks had responded well, albeit late, to sky-rocketing inflation.Reuters

________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.bt.com.bn/en/en/international_business/2008/09/17/financial_storm_could_hit_asia_economies