{"id":15377,"date":"2016-02-18T14:10:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T06:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=15377"},"modified":"2016-02-18T15:12:01","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T07:12:01","slug":"2815-a-hint-of-consumption-recovery-in-the-4q15-gdp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=15377","title":{"rendered":"[2815] A hint of consumption recovery in the 4Q15 GDP"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 4Q15 GDP figures came out better than my expectation. I had projected about 4.3% YoY but the official figure came slightly\u00a0higher at 4.5% YoY. However, it is still an overall slowdown\u00a0as warned earlier<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"GDP<\/p>\n

But there is a good news here.<\/p>\n

The blue\u00a0line in the chart above\u00a0representing consumption growth\u00a0picked up. That is a\u00a0green shoot, a hint that the economy might be turning around. Consumption weakness\u00a0has been the number one reason behind the gradual slowdown we are seeing in the\u00a0economy. This is why the slight uptick\u00a0is an important point to note.<\/p>\n

I do not have much details behind the stronger (but still weak!) consumption growth yet, but on the production side, there is a reason\u00a0to be optimistic that this is not some no-good\u00a0dead cat bouncing around. Based on\u00a0the performance of the retail sector, consumers did buy\u00a0more stuff:<\/p>\n

\"GDP<\/p>\n

There is also good news for people working in finance. The fourth quarter was less bad than 3Q15. The only real bad news is for people in mining. I am unsure if the drop it is all about\u00a0base effect, but the situation in the oil and gas sector is not pretty regardless. I suppose QoQ readings would tell me more but I am in a hurry right now.<\/p>\n

\"GDP<\/p>\n

We are not out of the woods yet. Despite signs of a turnaround, the 4.5% YoY overall growth is still a slowdown. Consumption has to cover a lot of ground before we can claim to be out of the $700 million<\/del>\u00a0MYR2.6 billion<\/del> hole. And I am worried about the employment rate given so many layoffs\u00a0taking place\u00a0late last year. The effects of those retrenchments might come too late to be accounted for in the 4Q15 GDP data.<\/p>\n

Finally, for the lovers of headline figures, the curse of 1Q15 frontloading<\/a> will bite back this quarter. Nevertheless, that will only be\u00a0a mathematical quirk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 4Q15 GDP figures came out better than my expectation. I had projected about 4.3% YoY but the official figure came slightly\u00a0higher at 4.5% YoY. However, it is still an overall slowdown\u00a0as warned earlier. But there is a good news here. The blue\u00a0line in the chart above\u00a0representing consumption growth\u00a0picked up. That is a\u00a0green shoot, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[731,304,266],"class_list":["post-15377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-consumption","tag-gdp","tag-retail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15377"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15392,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15377\/revisions\/15392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}