Korea suffers sinking growth

As industrial production slipped for three straight months.

According to DBS, growth is falling further. Industrial production shrank -0.7% MoM sa in August, the third consecutive month of contraction. On the demand side, the drags mainly came from exports and investment.

Here's more from DBS:

Producers’ shipments for exports have fallen for three consecutive months since June. Equipment investment already peaked in January and it plunged in August.

It is doubtful whether the sharp deterioration in industrial activity could be fully explained by the strikes in automobile industry and the two typhoons in August.

Production, exports and investment in the electronics sector also fell significantly. The inventory-to-shipment ratio (1.16) and the manufacturing operation ratio (73.8%) have both worsened to the levels as witnessed in Oct08 or Dec11.

Unless a V-shaped recovery emerges in September, the quarter-on-quarter growth in industrial production will be in the negative territory in 3Q.

If assuming the output growth in industrial, services and construction sectors all return to the potential rates in September, our regression models show that the 3Q GDP growth will be only 1.1% YoY or -1.5% QoQ saar.

Alarmingly, the leading indicators including machinery orders and construction orders deteriorated further in August, suggesting that the ongoing downtrend could continue in September.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia