WHAT a difference a year makes. Last year, the mood at the annual CapitaLand International Forum on the property sector was bleak as speakers surveyed a gloomy global economy. Yesterday, a year on, speakers at the same event held at the Raffles Hotel were pointing
cautiously to a revival of growth and brighter prospects in areas such as real
estate investment trusts (Reits) and in Asia, particularly China.
Ms Gail Fosler, president of United States-based business research organisation The Conference Board, who also spoke at last year’s event, said future global economic growth rates will be much lower than in recent times – but not unusually low.
The projection is 3.2 per cent for 2006 to 2016, compared with more than 5 per cent on average for 2004 to 2007 and some 4 per cent on average from 1996 to 2006. Virtually all global growth will be in emerging markets, she said. The notion of US consumption denting Asian growth is miscast, she said. ‘China is much more a factor in Asian growth than the US.’
Indeed, China, as an economic locomotive, is pulling up Asia and increasingly the rest of the world, said Professor Tan Kong Yam of Nanyang
Technological University’s division of economics. Continue reading
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