Asia warned of road bump ahead

HOTEL investors were cautioned that Asia’s spectacular growth would soon come to a slowdown, when the US finally pulls the plug on government life support and the economic bubble in China decides to pop.

Painting a grim outlook at the opening of the Hotel Investment Conference Asia-Pacific (HICAP) UPDATE in Singapore yesterday, Blackhorse Asset Management chief economist Richard Duncan said: “If you’re making plans about how to invest in China and in Asia, you’d better prepare for this change that is about to come. China is not going to have 10 per cent GDP growth for the next 10 years. It’s going to slow very radically.” (see related story, China losing its pull factor)

He explained that as the American government comes under pressure to reduce its budget deficit and the Federal Reserve’s “paper money creation” is scheduled to end in June, the US economy is likely to weaken in the second half of 2011.

Said Duncan: “The US trade deficit is not going to keep fuelling the global economy the way it has in the past. Asia’s era of export-led growth is over. This trade deficit is going to, at best, flatten out and possibly correct more than it already has.”

He believed as much as 40 per cent of China’s economy was dependent on its trade surplus with the US.

– Read more in TTG Asia, May 13

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