The Best Innovative Idea can come from Anywhere Today.
End users need, market demand, availability of new technology and the search for growth are some of the Key driving forces behind innovation. FOR example Africa out of necessity is becoming the testing ground for new and innovative mobile banking experiments. The ongoing innovation in mobile payment and mobile banking is filling the growing demand generated from a part of the population that was once excluded from the economic activities and considered untouchables by traditional banks. Today mobile phone is allowing people to participate in the demand side of the economy. These mobile banking experiments could potentially change the traditional banking as we know it. And going forward traditional banking models where if you were poor you are excluded will find it very hard to survive if they don’t adapt to the changing world around them.
Consumer lead innovation generally has a higher degree of success rate as it allows the corporate and entrepreneurs to fill in a growing demand. Companies as wells as governments across the world have realised that innovation and technological advances are key to their long term sustainable growth.
While corporates are driven by profit, the governments have an important role to play in creating a platform that allows and encourages real value ADD innovation. The governments need to work very closely with companies, entrepreneurs and provide a supporting framework which facilitates Innovation and with it Research & Development (R&D).
Today the policy makers in the developed world find themselves aggressively competing with their counterparts from the developing nations in order to make sure they don’t lose the competitive advantage but who is to say that the NEXT BIG THING won’t come from a developing nation.
Technology has changed the world around us and without it some of us will struggle to carry out routine work. We live in a world of Facebook, Twitters , messengers, youtube and the list goes on. Today our world is so interconnected like never before. And there are legitimate concerns about the impact of ideas like Facebook, Twitter etc on the society. Going forward the society, the policy makers will continue debating the pros and cons but we can all agree that there is no turning back the clock.
The success of ideas like facebook is in its approach to innovation and its application. The scope of applications of a technology or innovations in terms of scale is far greater today than ever before. Technologies and ideas that had more than 90% chance of failure some 10 years ago are in fact a SUCCESS story today. Technology is evolving and in some cases too fast with significant affect on the society and the world around us.
Going forward Innovation and technology will be Key to success for developing countries especially economies and societies like China, India who run the risk of chocking on their own growth. For R&D Companies especially in Green Technology demand from countries like China & India will be at the forefront of their business strategy.
We have already seen the fast paced evolution in green technology especially in Wind and Solar. Today the world wide wind capacity stands at around 251’000 MW and growing while the Photovoltaic production growth has averaged around 40% per year since 2000 and the installed capacity reached over 16 GW in 2011. Going forward the cost of power generation from green technologies like wind & solar will decline steadily as the technology gets better and more efficient.
The demands from developing countries for cleaner, cheaper, smarter, efficient and better technological innovations & ideas are coming out of sheer necessity and NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF ALL INVENTION. This growing demand will serve as a breathing ground for innovation. So it is highly plausible that the next BIG IDEA could come from the developing world or could be created for the developed world. And in order to make the most from the available opportunities companies, entrepreneurs, innovators will need to be based in markets that are generating the underlying demand. The governments in the developing world including of countries like China and India will need to work closely with all the participants and provide the required and essential support to harness innovation and new ideas.
Some of the things the governments in the developing world could do to encourage innovation:
- Tax breaks over medium to long term to companies, entrepreneurs, innovators
- Encourage state or privately held companies to acquire R&D companies overseas to fast track innovation. Burning cash on duplicating the efforts already made by others in a competitive R&D environment may not be worth a while exercise.
- Promote Innovation & technology knowing well that (R&D) is a risky investment but this risk profile can change overnight with a single EUREKA moment.
- Promote Innovations and R&D that adds real value to the economy and bring simplicity with it
- Pick and target sectors where it can create a niche and support it by domestic demand.
- Have a collaborative approach to mitigate the risk profile of the development phase of a certain technology hence enhancing the return on investment
- Be willing to share the development risk with the private sector
- Help with hand holding where necessary including with the implementation of the technological innovation in the market
- Open the market to competition attract overseas R&D Companies and support them with funding, risk sharing and establishment of a market ( if the underlying demand is not sufficient to support the bottom-line) by creating smart legislation and work with regional partners
While innovation and technology are going to be one of the Key drivers of sustainable growth it will be unwise to assume that all the innovations will add real value and provide growth. There are Innovations that add real value to the society and meet the growing needs and demands of the population but there others which may have an impact on the society but their real VALUE ADD is debatable.
Innovation and technology is a risky venture and not all of them will go on to become the NEXT BIG Thing. We live in a world where a company like Facebook with an estimated revenue of around USD 2 billion ( FY ending 2011 ) is valued at over US 100 billion and Twitter carries a valuation tag of around US 10 billon with an estimated revenue projection of approximately US 110 million ( FY 2011 ). Incredible valuation for private companies that may or may not exist after 30 or 50 years but whether or not we agree with the valuation and the methodology used for valuing these companies the fact remains that some in the market are happy to pay the price tag on these companies and ideas.
In January of this year Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies (DST) paid US $ 1.5 billion this investment valued the social network company at US 50 billion, a record valuation for a privately held company. Few months later General Atlantic purchased 2.5 million shares of Facebook valuing the company at US 65 billion. The valuation jumped by over US 15 billion is less than 3 months without any fundamental improvement in the bottom-line of the company.
Growth projections of a business are mostly an estimated guidance but using it as a KEY ingredient in your valuation methodology is pretty much like assuming that a person is tall by looking at their shadow. The numbers are only as good the people who create and make them so it is unwise to take them as the gospel set in stone.
There is a strong disconnect between the real economy, society and the market. And the problem is if any of these overpriced investments go bad the market and the media will report this as the bursting of technology bubble depriving good and essential innovative idea & technology of capital. And the technology sector will become a no go area again. We saw a bubble burst in the 2000s and its aftermath.
A sector could go from being attractive and undervalued to be overvalued in no time depending on the speed and the amount of capital flow it gets from investors around the world. There is a strong temptation among some in the market to ride on an in fashion trend and jump in the bandwagon. For example if emerging market is the growth story we are all tempted to ride it but the logic says if a country is growing at 9% percent it doesn’t necessarily mean that all the sectors of the economy are growing and attractive so committing capital based on the overall growth story is not just ill-advised it is how we build bubble and distort the reality.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )
Indo-China Trade has been growing at over five times the rate of world trade growth. Going forward their increasing economic strength and bilateral trade will create a super growth corridor where the world could plug in.
China and India are now leading economic stories on the world stage and this story may very well last through most of our life time. And while some in the market regard the two countries as competitors in the years to come collaboration and not competition will take the centre stage. India and China’s trade relationship is historic going back 2,000 years under the thriving Silk Road trade. Relationship between the two countries has been thorny in the past and they did go to war over a border issue in the Himalayan region in 1962 which affected the trade and bilateral relationship negatively.
However from the 2002 onwards when the two countries agreed to work on normalising the relationship and spurring commerce, the bilateral trade between the two has steadily grown from a mere US$ 7.3 billion in 2003 to around US $ 62 billion in 2010 growing by more than 8.4 times in just 7 years at an annual growth rate of over 120% making China the leading trading partner of India, and India jumping 11 places from 20th top trading partners of China in 2003 to be ranked 9th among China’s leading partners in 2010. The two countries have already agreed to push the bilateral trade to USD 100 billion mark by 2015. Although China’s bilateral trade volume with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea is higher the annual growth rate of the INDO-CHINA bilateral trade is far greater and is set to continue as business to business contacts grow. Also the size of the economy, population and the geographic closeness of the two countries provide abundant opportunities for growth in bilateral trade.
Today a significant portion of the world trade growth is coming from China and India. And this trend is set to continue going forward. Intra – Asian trade has clearly been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the growth. According to IMF the interregional trade flows within Asia has grown at the rate of over 13.4% from 2000 to 2009 and is estimated to be valued at just over US 1 trillion. So far China has been the major driving force behind the interregional trade growth. And a noticeable change in pattern has been the increase in imports from Asia to meet the domestic demand coming from Chinese consumers whereas previously a bulk of the imports from parts of Asia were assembled in China and re-exported to the developed markets. The pickup in domestic demand is line with the government’s attempt to rebalance the Chinese economy. In its recent 12th five-year plan Beijing has set out a clear plan and set of measures to rebalance the economy and drive up domestic consumption.
The Government in China has realized that a vibrant domestic market is the only guarantee of a sustainable growth and long term success and relying heavily on foreign demand makes the country vulnerable to external shocks . So expanding domestic consumption is clearly a favoured long-term strategy for Beijing especially when its export based manufacturing seems to be slowing down and gradually may lose competitiveness mostly driven by rapidly rising high wages, higher input cost, shortage of low-skilled workers among others. Various projections suggest that the working age population in China will peak around 2015, so the labor supply is going to gradually decline and push up the wages even higher.
Historically wage growth and household income in China have not matched the overall GDP growth and some research suggests that in fact wages have actually fallen from 53.2% of gross domestic product between 1992 and 1999 to 49.7% between 2000 and 2008. So in its efforts to rebalance the economy the government has taken measures to allow significant rise in wages across the board. In line with government policy the municipalities across China have raised the minimum wage on average by over 20%.
Rising wage pressure, appreciating currency and high input cost driven by inflation may be enough to shut down a significant number of export houses in China especially in the low manufacturing sector where exporters’ average margin is around 3% or less.
Going forward the government in China will have to look at creating policies that will allow private sector to play a bigger role and drive the domestic demand. Having that said it is worth noting that since 1999, the share of State owned Enterprise (SOEs) has declined from 37 percent to less than 5 percent in terms of numbers, and from 68 percent to 44 percent in terms of assets as a result of the SOE reforms carried out in the past under “grasping the big, letting go of the small” strategy. That said still a huge portion of the Chinese economy ( in terms of GDP ) is under government control and it has been the major driving force behind the overall GDP growth whereas the private sector has been driving India’s growth.
It is estimated that over 80% of the Indian economy is now in private hands and the private sectors is driving the investments story in the country. Private sector in India has benefitted hugely from the Indian growth and has accumulated significant wealth. It is estimated that the combined total assets of India’s wealthy is set to reach around US $ 6.4 trillion( the highest in Asia ) over the next 4-5 years.
India’s demographic profile is very attractive with a strong pool of young population adding to the workforce every year but it must be said that a good percentage of them may not be employable. So the government needs to reform its education sector and also increase the number of good universities and colleges across the country. One way to do it will be to encourage established foreign education institutions to set up campuses in India alongside or in partnership with the local universities and colleges.
As the Indian economy grows it is estimated that around 200-250 million people may be added to the consuming class in the next 7 to 10 years. This presents a huge opportunity to both domestic and foreign companies within Asia and other parts of the world.
In the short to medium term China will still be at the centre stage like the sun in the solar system driving the interregional growth in Asia and parts of emerging markets. Having said that India’s share is gradually increasing and so is its annual growth rate. It is worth noting that India’s annual GDP growth rate for 2010 was slightly above China according to the recent IMF publications. This does not mean that India will anytime soon match China’s economy in terms of the overall GDP ranking. But both the countries are expected to be major driver of growth for the region and other emerging market economies. Based on this assessment the Intra-Asian trade flow is estimated to grow at an average rate of over 12% year-on-year until 2020 (according to HSBC and Asian Development Bank ) and the series of bilateral free-trade agreements signed recently by both China and India with others Asian countries will significantly boost the regional trade flows.
However it must be said that said both the countries do face significant challenges going forward. There are some concerns that the Chinese economy is overheating and the increased investments in fixed assets especially infrastructure and real estate which shows no visible signs of slowing down in spite of the tightening measures will hinder the real and required rebalancing of the economy. The latest Q1 GDP print for 2011 show the economy grew at 9.7% year-on-year which exceeds market expectation and also defy concerns about any slowdown in growth.
Some commentators have also suggested that China’s growth story resembles Japan in the 1980’s and ultimately like Japan the bubble will burst and the country will hit a wall. It is worth pointing out that most of the bold forecasts about China have turned out to be wrong. The funny thing about forecasting and making predictions is if you make enough of them on a regular basis there is a good probability that you may get some right eventually. And with the right marketing skills and a bit of luck you could turn yourself into a market GURU.
Due to its growing economic influence China does attract a lot of attention and there are many economic theories around China. It is worth noting that although China is the world’s second largest economy it still has a very high income disparity and a low per capita income. And unlike Japan in 1980’s the country is still a developing economy and has a decade or more of growth left in the tank. Chinese growth story today resonate more with the U.S. story in the early 1900s when the U.S. went through numerous boom and bust but each time the economy recovered and got bigger.
The market expects the government in Beijing to fast track the implementation of policies that drives up the house hold income in real terms; increase the role played by private sector, and incentivise domestic consumptions among others. Also currency appreciation and a collaborative approach to guard against commodity and oil & gas price volatility may be a useful method to fight against inflation driven by external factors.
The previous strategy under which Beijing encouraged its State owned Enterprise ( SOEs ) to acquire mineral & mining resource assets including Oil & Gas overseas to secure price stability and supply didn’t really deliver the desired result. While state owned enterprise (SOEs) profited from the government’s “equity oil “ strategy the Chinese consumers and the policy makers didn’t see any real reward. And in the current political turmoil in the middle-east Beijing may have to re-visit the existing strategy and look at ways to increase global co-operation with other resources (including Oil & Gas) dependant countries to create a collective game plan for guarding against supply disruption and greater price stability.
Having said that commodities and oil & gas prices will remain vulnerable to speculation and a significant percentage of the pricing input and price movement of commodities including of OIL & GAS is based on speculation. It is worth noting that the world is not constant but changing where a useless commodity can become relevant overnight driven by innovation and technology. For example Crude Oil was once a useless commodity that became valuable overnight. Also Bolivia’s Lithium reserves – Lithium is used for the production of batteries and was once considered useless but it is extremely valuable these days and with the explosive growth in hybrid and electric cars the demand is outstripping the supply on a daily basis. So all of a sudden Bolivia is becoming very important in the whole scheme of things. It must be said that evolution, innovation and technological advances are key to sustainability and survival. The saying “Necessity is the MOTHER OF INVENTION “clearly holds TRUE.
India and China together is home to over 2.5 billion people so food and energy security will always be at the forefront of government’s policy. And in line with this policy both India and China have allowed home grown companies to expand capacity by acquiring assets in other emerging markets. Indian Agro companies have acquired and leased various agricultural assets including of farming lands in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and parts of Africa. India’s agriculture sector is need of serious investments and structural reform including improving farming methods in order to increase its productivity.
China has 10% less arable land than India yet its agricultural production is 25% higher. Also China implemented land reforms in the early fifties which resulted in enhanced agricultural output, establishment of agro industries whereas with the exception of some states land reforms were mostly half measures in India. Bad policies decisions further deepened the crisis and as a result thousands of farmers are committing suicides every year across the country. Having said that private sector in India is making serious investment in the agro based industry and some of them bearing fruits. Going forward the government and the private sector in India will need to work together to boost investments in agro infrastructure as well as upgrading of existing distribution system, irrigation, farming methods and technology. New Delhi will have to look at liberalizing R&D in agriculture sector, create policies to encourage investments in the agro sector of the economy and this will have to include the much needed land reforms.
China’s ambitious development goals are an official target of reaching a 95 percent grain self-sufficiency rate. This policy is a pillar to establishing the country’s food security, and result in an increase in domestic fertilizer consumption. According to the governments figures China’s national grain consumption will reach 572.5 million tons around 2020, requiring an increase of around 50 million tons in domestic fertilizer production over the next 10 years. In order to achieve these targets, the government has made clear that it plans to boost investment in agro infrastructure also upgrade existing technologies in irrigation systems as well as seedlings, while improving farming methods and increasing the level mechanisation in the sector.
While both India and China search for a more competent, healthier and sustainable way to develop their economy. They do face similar challenges and one of them is to find a growth model that is inclusive and able to deal with growing income inequality which could potentially create social unrest going forward.
The two great civilizations of the past are finding their way back to the world centre stage as economic powers and in the process reshaping the future of the global economy. Both countries can learn a lot from each other and through collaboration create limitless growth opportunities.
A combined population of 2.5 billion presents a huge market full of abundant opportunities that has a potential of creating a super- highway for growth. And linking to a super growth corridor will allow other countries especially the emerging economies to increase their growth speed limits significantly. So there is a strong case for companies and economies to have a China- India strategy (aka CHINDIA ) rather than a strategy that focuses only on China or India.
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In the last few weeks some of my friends and colleagues have been very busy debating the global economic situation and trying to figure out where we are heading. GO Figure! Eh…. I so wish I could help them and had answers to all their questions. But then on a second thought no harm in trying…. right?
Let us look at the last few months to get a good handle of where we are, shall we? To begin with I must say if we look at the events unfolding in the last couple of months there was no dull moment and it has been an action-packed rollercoaster ride which has kept us busy and entertained but this depends on how you look at it.
Shall we do a quick RECAP and look at some of the HIGHLIGHTS of the past few months?
Starting with China we saw Agricultural Bank of China raise a record US$ 22 billion in IPO. It was the world largest IPO, the previous record was held by ICBC- China after raising US $ 21.9 billion in IPO. Although some suggested that the reception for Agricultural Bank of China ( Ag Bank ) was lackluster and the IPO was apparently overvalued but most of the analysts surveyed by Reuters expect the stock to go up to RMB 2.81 relatively quickly. Up to 40% of the Shanghai offering was sold to about 27 strategic investors including of China Life Insurance, China State Construction among others on a 12-18 months lock-in period. And from the Hong Kong listing a total of around US $ 5.5 billion worth of stocks were sold to Qatar and Kuwait’s Investment Authorities. It is interesting to note that the bank which was considered by many as technically bankrupt with more than 24% in non-performing loans around 3-4 years ago managed to raise a colossal amount of money and also reported a 40% jump in net profit in the first half of 2010. I wonder how Ag bank’s turnaround reflects on the investors’ confidence especially those reluctant to hold bank stocks and may be other banks could take a leaf from Agricultural Bank of China’s book? .Let’s see.
In the short to medium term the market expects China based banks to raise more money as their balance sheet comes under pressure due to excessive lending to the property market. The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has instructed the Chinese banks to test the impact of a 50% fall in the house prices in major cities across China. This is in addition to an early nation-wide stress test that showed the local banks in China could sustain a fall of up to 30% in housing prices without a sharp increase in non-performing loan ratios.
It is highly plausible that the Chinese Government will continue with its controls to restrain the property market fearful of the social pressure that could arise from a BOOM-BUST in property sector as recently seen in the US and in Japan in the 80’s. And this is already feeding into the overall demand from things like construction raw materials including of steel, cement etc to household products among others.
Most of the recently published figures show a softening in demand. The annual factory output in July slipped to 13.4 from 13.7 in June although above the consensus but still a decline. The Consumer price inflation fell to 2.9% in June from 3.1% in May. These figures along with the weaker retail sales indicate clearly a slowdown in the economic activities across which was reflected in the second quarter (Q2) GDP numbers. According to the National Bureau of Statistic (NBS ) the growth fell to 10.3% in Q2 from 11.9% in Q1 of 2010. The Q2 GDP print was below the market expectation of 10.5%.
Although there are different view as to where the Chinese economy is heading I believe the GDP and other data are in line with expectations and there is no alarm yet. The slowdown as expected looks moderate and I believe there will be no policy relaxation from Beijing in the immediate future especially based on these set of numbers. So going forward we may see the investments come down and the recent numbers out do point in that direction. Let’s look at them. According to the Central Bank the total loans for the month of July stood at RMB 533 billion, below the forecasted RMB 600 billion, the year-on-year credit growth has also slowdown sharply to 18.4% in July, well down from 33.8% of last year, also the annual growth in the broad M2 measure of money supply considered the lubricant of economic growth slowed to 17.6 percent in July from 18.5 percent in June.
What all this means is we may see further softening in demands in China which will reflect badly on imports including of commodities and machineries etc going forward. To add to that we are already seeing a significant buildup in inventories and this is not what you want to hear if you were a German machine manufacturer, a miner or a commodity driven company/economy. Some in the financial markets may worry that the policy makers in China are applying the brakes too hard to slowdown the economy which could take out a big chunk of the existing global demand especially because China has been a major driving force. And this may reflect badly on the overall global growth prospect and recovery.
There is no doubt that the slowdown in economic activities is in line with Beijing’s expectation and this is clearly a government engineered slowdown as the market feared an overheating of the economy earlier this year and some analysts even suggested that it may be too late for Beijing to a get grip over the runaway economy. This is why I keep telling my friends and colleagues never underestimate the policy makers in Beijing.
The other side of the story is that the economy is still holding up and even with the current slowdown in activities the consensus view is that China could still grow at 9% or there about in the FY 2010. This is by no mean the end of the world as some may fear. I believe it is worth noting that going forward the government may start to ease its credit policy especially if there are signs that the economy is slowing down too rapidly for Beijing’s liking and so by the end of the year they may speed up targeted investments in areas such as low-income housing, rural development and clean energy. Also we shouldn’t forget that one of the advantages of the existing political system in China is that it allows the policy makers to acts faster and swiftly unlike their peers in other parts of the world.
Staying with Asia the fact is many policy makers across Asia are starting to worry more about inflation and hot money flow than a double-dip. Most economies in Asia including of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, India, China, Indonesia and Australia among others have all seen a very significant capital inflows in 2009 and the first half of 2010 mostly from investors attracted by their growth potential. And now there is a genuine concern that the amount of hot money committed to Asia and Emerging market as whole could create an Asset bubble going forward. In fact European and American equities markets are looking cheaper then developing markets and you wonder if some emerging markets may have already produced most of their gains. That said the growth story of the emerging markets is still intact and investors looking for growth will remain extremely attracted to the EM.
So far this year Southeast Asian Markets has had a very strong run and as of the end of July, Indonesia was the best-performing market in the world in 2010, the Jakarta Composite Index up 26.2 percent; Thailand’s Main Index was up 19.7 percent; Malaysia’s 14.5 percent and The Philippines’ 13.0 percent. However, Singapore Straits Timex Index was only up by 6.3% in the first half of 2010 despite a second quarter (Q2) GDP print of 19.3% year-on-year. The city-state economy is benefiting from government investment in the bioscience, electronics and construction sectors among others and is expected to grow at around 15% or more in the FY 2010.
Moving on let us look at what’s cooking in Europe shall we?
The recent numbers out from the Euro Zone clearly point to a two faced growth in the Euro area. While Germany the largest economy in the Europe expanded at the fastest pace in over two decades reporting a 2.2% growth in second quarter (Q2) and was responsible for almost two thirds of the Euro bloc’s second- quarter growth but unfortunately its southern European counterparts are still struggling to recover from the CRISIS.
Germany’s business confidence data- Ifo index continues to be on the ascending trajectory showing the strongest increase since the reunification in 1990’s. The unemployment rate in June declined to 7.5 % from 7.7 % in May the jobless numbers was down by 88,000. This was mainly due to the government support for maintaining employees on the job with shorter hours instead of laying them off. The economy seems to be getting in shape and the export driven business model of Germany is in full swing. All the signs show that the Germans export benefitted heavily from the demands coming from Asia especially China but going forward it is highly plausible that the growth may lose momentum because of the strengthening Euro and softening in demands from countries like China. Also in the second half of 2010 the austerity measures will kick in hampering the growth further.
The austerity measures are already crippling growth in countries like Latvia, Greece and Ireland. Take for example LATVIA –one of the first EU nations to implement austerity measures two years ago. The huge budget cuts have made the matter worst. Also Greece has been hit harder than previously forecasted after implementing the severe austerity measures and it is highly likely that the growth will remain negative for this year hurting the economy even further. According to a recent research published by the retail confederation ESEE about a fifth of small shops in Athens have shut down because of the downturn. The unemployment is expected to go higher from its current 12% level hitting the private consumption further. The ongoing recession is deepening consumers’ insecurities about jobs and debt, making them cut their spending and to try to wind down borrowings. It is highly plausible that the impact will become more pronounced in the second half of 2010. We will have to wait and see. It is going to be a real test for the voters and politicians.
There is a genuine fear in the market that with the austerity measures kicking in around the second half (H2) of the 2010 some of the European nations including of Spain may slip back into recession after reporting a GDP growth of 0.2% in the second quarter (Q2 ) creating a growth gap and making it harder for the European Central Bank (ECB ) to correctly gauge the timing of its policy tightening steps. As things stand I think it is safe to assume that it’s too early for ECB to start thinking about tighter policies and one should not get carried away with Germany’s second quarter ( Q2 ) growth numbers. The reality is Euro Zone countries are still struggling to keep their head above the water and in most countries across the EU the wage pressure are downwards and the core inflation stand at just 1%. Also besides Germany other major European economies like Italy are struggling with the mountain of debt and raising money for them in the market is not getting any easier as reflected by recent jump in the spreads. Based on Bloomberg data for the first time since June 28 the premium that investors demand to hold 10-year Greek bonds against a German government bond of same maturity rose to 800 basis points (bps) and the Spanish government bond yields climbed six basis points to 4.24 %. Most investors are also shunning Spanish banks because of their record borrowing of 130.2 billion euros from the European Central Bank in July of 2010.
It is also worth noting that while Germany is forging ahead the others in the EU believe that it is doing so at their expense. By cutting the budget deficit and keeping the wages down Germany is in fact making it harder for other EU states to regain competitiveness. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out for the Euro Zone going forward.
The hope is that the European leaders will learn from their past mistakes and going forward they will look beyond their national interest and work together towards perfecting the Union. The Union was not designed or conceived to handle a CRISIS it clearly exposed the flaws and also the limits of EU integration and coordination.
Staying with the EU let us also look at the performance of the UK economy, a prominent EU member and a major trading partner, in the last few months.
According to the office of National Statistics the UK economy grew at 1.1% in the second quarter ( Q2 ) of 2010. The Q2 GDP print was well above the market forecast of 0.6% but as per my expectations. I wrote a piece in April of 2010 titled “Market Psychology and Investors Sentiment (mood of the market) – The Driving Force Behind the markets “. I have copied an extract from the post which explains the reason behind my assumption.
“ And in terms of growth, going forward we could see a market beating quarterly GDP numbers and the reasons for that is simple we simple don’t know how much spare capacity is left in the economy and the inventories are so LOW that even with the existing and basic demand you will see a pickup in growth and this could PUSH the market up”
So does that mean the UK economy is now getting back in SHAPE?
Well let’s look at the bigger picture to get a better IDEA. A recent survey done by the building society Nationwide puts British consumer morale at the lowest since May 2009. According to Nationwide the rising food and fuel costs may also have played a part in the drop in consumer confidence indicator from 63 in June to 56 in July. The survey also showed a sharp fall in households’ sentiment about the economy, job market and income over the next six months. Consumers are growing increasingly concerned about their disposable income and the planed VAT rise from January of 2011 probably won’t help that concern going forward.
Also according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors the house prices fell for the first time in a year in July because of the buyers’ reluctance to commit as the sellers rushed to sell their properties. There is a risk that we may see this softer trend continue in the second half (H2) of 2010 as many prospective buyers are still struggling to raise mortgage finance. I believe it is worth noting that the high profits for banks in the first half of 2010 were also facilitated by lower impairment of existing mortgages and expectations that house prices would be stable. Going forward a slowing housing market along with the planned 25% government spending cuts, VAT rise, and a high unemployment among others will add to the uncertainty facing the Bank of England as it tries to guess the growth prospects for the UK economy.
The new coalition government in Britain has decided to strip down to its bones as it prepares to cut the expenditures by more than 83 billion pounds over the next five years and drastically shrink its responsibilities. You can’t help but wonder if the economy can survive a starvation diet. Imagine an extra extra extra large ( XXXL ) size human being decides to SLIM down dramatically and goes on a CRASH WEIGHT loss program. The commonsense tells us that he will SLIM down alright but in the process also runs the risk of crashing his/her heart. A gradual weight reduction is always the best advice which also leads to a long term weight control and a healthy system.
There is no doubt that Britain risks losing it growth momentum due to the planned spending cuts, VAT rise etc. And it is evident from the Bank of England recent downgrading of UK’s growth forecast for the FY 2010 the bank also raised its inflation expectation for the next year in its recent published quarterly growth and inflation forecast.
Staying with the spending cuts here is an extract of what I wrote in one of my post titled “Stimulus: The Exit Strategy and the road ahead” in January of 2010. I think it is still relevant.
“Although one understands that there is need to fix balance sheets (fiscal consolidation) and address the inflationary concerns by having a clearly formulated, defined and coordinated exit strategy in place. But that said Timing will be KEY here as exiting too soon or too late has its own risk. And also it is extremely important that the process should only begin when there is enough hard evidence to see that economy will keep growing on its own after the removal of the stimulus or in other words it is evident that the recovery is solid, financial markets are back to normalcy and credit risk spreads are at an acceptable level and there is a significant risk to inflation over the medium term”
In the same post there is another interesting point that I thought I’ll share again.
Here is an extract “ ……………….one has to also admit that the policy makers have managed to avoid a Great Depression type event by not adopting an extremely tight fiscal and monetary policy but a single policy mistake here could jeopardize the whole recovery process “.
I think it is important to point out that both the points are still relevant and we can only hope that the policy makers get it right and have a good foresight.
Moving on it is no secret that the global economy is still very reliant on the US and going forward an underperforming US economy will reflect badly on the overall growth prospect. So let us check out how the US economy has been doing in the past few months.
The market was anxiously awaiting the Financial Regulation (FinReg) Bill so the biggest news coming out of the U.S. for some was the passing of the FinReg bill in July of 2010 that is supposedly going to prevent future CRISIS. Whether it does or not well for that we will have to wait and see. The FinReg bill deals with a number of issues. Some of the important one’s are Systemic Risk – Under the proposed plan the Financial Stability Oversight Council chaired by the secretary of the treasury will identify firms that threaten stability of the system and subject them to tighter oversight by the Federal Reserve; Ending Bailouts -Firms would have a mandatory “funeral plans” or a living Will that describes how they could be shut down quickly; Supervising Banks – the Comptroller of the Currency will take over from the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision and the FDIC’s deposit insurance coverage will be raised to $250,000 per individual from the current $100,000 level ; Hedge Funds – All Private equity and hedge funds with assets of $150 million or more will need to register with the SEC and will be subject to more inspection. However, venture capital funds would be exempted; Insurance – A new federal agency/office will monitor the industry; Volcker Rule And Bank Standards – credit exposure from derivative transactions will have to be added to banks’ lending limits, Non-bank financial firms under the Fed supervision will now face limits on proprietary trading and as well fund investing etc; And Investors protection among others.
Now coming back to the performance of the US economy in the past few months, the recent data from the US has been mixed and also weak. So let us look at some of them.
We saw the U.S. consumer-price index increase by 0.3%, the most in a year and above the market expectation. The Commerce Department data showed retail sales excluding autos, gasoline and building materials unexpectedly fell by 0.1 % in July. According to Reuters/University of Michigan survey of consumers the preliminary index of consumer sentiment jumped to 69.6 following a reading of 67.8 in July, the lowest since November. Also the U.S. second quarter (Q2) GDP growth slowed to 2.4%.
Based on the recent data coming out the US it is safe to assume that the recovery is softening. Taking this into account the Federal Reserve has taken fresh steps to lower borrowing costs. In a recent statement the Fed announced that “ to help support the economic recovery in a context of price stability, the committee will keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their current level by reinvesting principal payments from agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in longer-term Treasury securities”. This is a significant policy shift as not long ago the central bank was eagerly debating the EXIT strategy from the huge stimulus delivered during the crisis. The Fed is also downbeat about the growth outlook going forward. A recent San Francisco Fed study suggests that there is a strong chance that the US economy will slip back into recession in the next two years. And to add to that according to the latest IMF’s annual review of the U.S. economy the fund observed that the U.S. fiscal gap associated with current federal fiscal policy is huge for probable discount rates.” And it claims that “closing the fiscal gap will require a stable annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14% of U.S. current GDP. That basically translate into a constant doubling of personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll if the U.S. was to try to close the current fiscal gap from the revenues. So in short the country is living way beyond its means. Some would term this as a technical bankruptcy. Shocking isn’t it? But this depends on how you look at it. Remember the phrase when the U.S. sneezes the world catches cold well this still holds true so fear not. Also you go bankrupt only if others are not willing to lend you the money. It is in the interest of the world to keep the U.S. economy afloat and going forward it is highly unlikely that the foreign buyers of U.S. treasuries including of China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and others will abandon the US. Although the US economy has performed a bit below the market expectations it will be unwise to write it off and underestimate its ability to come back. But going forward there may be a significant rise in the poverty level across the U.S. and we are also going to see tax rises among other things. It is worth noting that the Fed’s still have ammunitions at their disposal but we will have to wait and see how effective they are going to be.
There is no doubt that going forward the policy makers in the U.S. will have to find ways to make sure that credit worthy small and medium size businesses have access to capital. Banks, companies and individual consumers are all economically inter-reliant. So if the financial institutions refuse to provide credit to good businesses because of the fear that other lenders will cut down as well. This will create a shortage of credit hence extending the CRISIS and delaying recovery even more.
So how will all this reflect on the growth prospects in a wider context?
There is no doubt that the emerging markets have been leading the way and in general investors have so far been more optimistic about the emerging markets than the US or Europe. Also it is interesting to note that the performance of the Asian indexes has been reflected in the US and other developed markets. And the demand side of the story has been mostly driven by Asia especially China. Although all the recent data suggests that the economic activities in major Asian economies like China is moderately slowing down that said China, India, Indonesia and others have a lot of growing to do. And going forward a big chunk of the global demand is going to come from the developing world especially China and India. According to the Washington based Inter American Development Bank (IADB) the total economic output from China and India combined together is expected to be around 10 times bigger than Europe’s total GDP by 2040. While China is already a leading trading partner of most developing countries as well as developed nations across the world, India is now adding to the demand side. Going forward India – a commodity hungry country, may very well become a key demand side client for commodity driven economies like Latin America.
Also the economic growth outlook for Africa is improving and going forward the region does have the potential to become a significant growth provider. And it is in the interest of the world to foster growth in the region. The policy makers especially in the developed world should look at Africa as a prospective vibrant market that will create demand and work towards creating a long term partnership with the region. Some European companies especially Portuguese are already tapping into Africa and generating more than 50% of their revenues from the region thus compensating for the loss of revenue from their domestic market.
This is why I keep saying to my friends and colleagues that the fear of double-dip might be good for the markets in the long run as it will keep the policy makers awake and alert fearing a policy mistake here could jeopardize the whole recovery process and the global community will blame them for it. That’s the fun of living in a globalised world where your problem may become mine sooner or later. Also I am starting to think that this CRSIS is an opportunity to rebalance the world and comparing this crisis to the past recessions and deploying the old rules of thumb is probably unwise as today we have a number of other factors including of a very vibrant emerging market that could influence the outcome.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 7 so far )