Economic and Financial Market Highlights

Factory output figures in Korea and Thailand for September showed that manufacturing has expanded on both yearly and monthly terms. Furthermore, Japan’s industrial output shrank at its slowest pace in 11 months over the same month last year and has expanded from August. The only exception to this improving trend was Singapore, where industrial production accelerated its decline.

Meanwhile, Korea published robust GDP growth for the third quarter while exports continued to drop in Thailand, Hong Kong and Philippines albeit at a slower rate. On the policy front, India, Japan and Malaysia maintained their reference rates unchanged although India started to unwind its extraordinary stimulus measures and Japan confirmed it will follow suit in December. A negative week for Asia Pacific stock exchanges while most currencies withdrew against the US Dollar.

Greater China

  • China’s industrial enterprises reported a combined profit of CNY1.55 trillion in first nine months, down 9.1% year on year. The decline was 4% points less than that of January-August period. Core business revenues of those companies reached CNY28.8 trillion in the first nine months, up 3.4% from a year earlier. The growth rate was 1.5 percentage points higher than that of the first eight months.
  • Hong Kong's exports fell 8.6% from a year earlier in September after a drop of 13.9% yoy n August and below the 10% yoy decline expected by the market. Concurrently, imports dropped at a slower pace of 3.1% over a year earlier beating expectations of a 9.5% yoy slump. The fall in imports in September was the smallest yearly contraction in ten months. Hong Kong's trade deficit increased to HKD29.1 billion (USD3.75 billion) in September from HKD21.85 billion in the prior month. Comparing the third quarter of 2009 with the preceding quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis, the value of total exports of goods decreased by 2.2%, reversing the previous quarter’s 2.6% rise.
  • Taiwan's M2 money supply rose 8.28% in September from the same month last year, accelerating from August's 8.17% growth rate. The central bank attributed the faster growth to inflows of foreign capital. On seasonally adjusted monthly basis, M2 increased 0.5% mom, up from August’s 0.4% mom increase and July’s 0.3% mom rise.