When I opened my (electronic) Financial Times this morning, the headline ‘China slowdown hits Asian growth hopes’ seemed rather gloomy. As an expat European, I was bracing myself for bad news to follow, so was rather cheered to read the actual growth forecast for the region of 6.1%. Whilst that is a downward revision from the 6.9% forecast earlier in the year, compared to the continuing weakness across European economies it is still a very healthy rate of growth.
The article spurred me to check the underlying source – the Asian Development Bank’s Outlook 2012 Update report published today. The report’s summary contains a handy infographic summarising the importance of the services sector as a driver of Asia’s future growth:
The detailed report highlights the importance of high valued added subsectors including information, communications and technology (ICT) services, financial services and professional services as being both a growth sectors themselves and also providing spillover benefits to increase growth in other sectors.