Hong Kong sinking into recession with no recovery in sight

HONG KONG: Hong Kong is facing its first recession since the global financial crisis, with little prospect of an immediate recovery as the city confronts its most violent protests in decades.

From luxury hotels and major shopping malls to neighbourhood stores and restaurants in tourist hubs like Central, Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui, businesses are closing early or seeing fewer customers. Even when things are open, stores and the airport are quiet, as tourists stay away.

The city’s subway network, or MTR, was closed entirely for long stretches during the holiday weekend from Oct 4 amid the violent backlash to Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s attempt to quell months of protests by invoking a colonial-era emergency law.

The economy in Hong Kong contracted in the second quarter, almost certainly in the third quarter and the data are still deteriorating. The question is how deep and prolonged the pain will be. Once Asia’s manufacturing powerhouse before the rise of mainland China, Hong Kong’s free-wheeling consumer and finance-led economy is highly vulnerable to a collapse in confidence that has been delivered by the turmoil.

The city’s government has struggled to make the case that it has the policy tools to arrest the slide while the unrest continues.

“I do not expect to see any strong measures that can instantaneously turn things around,” said Dong Chen, senior Asia economist with Pictet Wealth Management, one of a growing chorus of experts predicting Hong Kong had a second straight quarterly contraction in the three months through September.

“The best scenario is after this political unrest they can come up with longer-term planning or measures to solve structural problems.”

The effects of the Us-china trade war combined with a lack of tourist spending power also raises the prospect of a contraction for the full year, compared with 2018. The downturn has been rapid, as declining exports and protests have erased any economic momentum from the start of 2019.

When Financial Secretary Paul Chan unveiled his budget in February, he forecast annual growth of 2% to 3% – by August, he had slashed that forecast to zero to 1%.

Many economists see growth for all of 2019 sliding well below 1% – Jpmorgan Chase & Co’s latest call is 0.3% – for the weakest reading since 2009.

The downturn has also taken its toll on Hong Kong’s equity market. The MSCI Hong Kong Index has slumped 18% from an April high, with real estate and consumer stocks leading declines in that time.

A variety of key economic indicators have rapidly turned south in the past few months:

> Retail sales by value plunged a record 23% in August from a year earlier as demand for luxury goods such as jewellery and watches plummeted.

> Tourism arrivals declined almost 40% in August from a year earlier to about 3.6 million visitors, the worst performance since the 2003 SARS epidemic, according to data from the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

> Exports are expected to shrink this year to the worst level in a decade, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council warned as it slashed its 2019 growth forecasts.

> Sentiment among small- and medium-sized businesses hit fresh lows in August.

> The IHS Markit September whole economy purchasing managers’ index reading ticked higher, but still signals contraction at 41.5.