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Hong Kong's GDP Rose 0.5 Percent in Second Quarter
The sluggish global economic environment continued to weigh on the Hong Kong economy in the second quarter of 2001, according to the Half-yearly Economic Report 2001, released by the Hong Kong government on Friday.
On a year-on-year comparison, Hong Kong's GDP rose by only 0.5 percent in real terms in the second quarter of 2001, further moderated from the 2.3 percent growth in the first quarter. On a seasonally adjusted quarter-to-quarter comparison, GDP had a 1.7 percent decline in real terms in the second quarter of 2001, after staying virtually flat in the first quarter.
In view of the further worsened external environment impinging on merchandise exports and the sharp ease-back in local investment, the forecast of GDP growth for 2001 as a whole is lowered further, to just 1 percent in real terms, from 3 percent in the May update.
Externally, the slump in global demand resulted in an almost across-the-board fall-off in merchandise exports by market, giving an overall decline of 1.9 percent in real terms in the second quarter of 2001 over a year earlier.
Locally, consumer spending picked up to a 4.0 percent growth in real terms in the second quarter of 2001 over a year earlier, upon increased household income and probably also helped by lower interest rates. But investment spending eased back sharply to a meagre 0.4 percent growth in real terms in the second quarter of 2001 over a year earlier.
In the labour market, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stayed at 4.6 percent in both the first and the second quarters of 2001, while the underemployment rate fell slightly, from 2.4 percent in the first quarter to 2.3 percent in the second quarter.
On the price front, the year-on-year decline in the Composite Consumer Price Index continued to narrow in recent months, as wages had risen moderately and as the effect of the earlier dip in rentals dissipated further. Yet with the larger price falls in the earlier months, the Composite CPI still had an average year-on- year decline of 1.5% in the first seven months of 2001.
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