According to the Japanese External Trade Organisation (Jetro), economic growth in east Asia will pick up next year and then strengthen as exports to developed countries recover. Growth in newly industrialised economies more reliant on exports of technology goods, however, is expected to continue to lag behind China and Japan, say Jetro.
In its latest set of forecasts of the economic outlook for the ten principal East Asian economies – China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam- it estimates that growth this year will average 3.7%, less than half last year’s 7.6%.
The slowdown in world trade this year has hit east Asia particularly hard. The International Monetary Fund estimated in its World Economic Outlook published this week that the volume of world trade in goods will have grown by just 0.2% last year and will grow by just 1.7% next year, compared with 12.8% growth last year.
