【英语财经】新兴市场前景乐观？ EM growth rises despite doom and gloom

Emerging markets are enveloped in gloom, with China’s slowdown, the repercussions of tumbling commodity prices, Middle East tensions and recessions in Brazil and Russia jostling to grab the headlines.

As a result, jittery foreign investors have withdrawn money from the emerging world for an unprecedented six straight months, the Institute of International Finance, an industry association, said this week.

But step back from the daily noise and it can be argued that, while emerging markets are not shooting the lights out, matters are really not that bad.

The International Monetary Fund forecasts that economic growth in emerging markets will pick up from a touch under 4 per cent last year to 4.5 per cent in 2016, bucking five straight years of declining growth and helping push global growth up from 3.1 per cent to 3.6 per cent.

Moreover, this improvement should be reasonably widespread, with even the Commonwealth of Independent States (ie the former Soviet Union) and Latin America and the Caribbean, both of which probably saw their economies shrink in 2015, slated by the IMF to return to growth this year.

A cynic might add that, all too often, the IMF overestimates future growth and has to revise down its forecasts at a later date.

However, more timely data compiled by Bank of America Merrill Lynch add credence to the IMF’s current optimism.

The bank’s proprietary GEMcycle, which tracks cyclical business conditions in the 10 largest emerging market economies, rose for the fourth straight month in December, according to an update released this week.

As the first chart shows, this bounce has now erased the decline in the index registered since the middle of 2013.

The zero line on the chart represents BofA’s estimate of trend growth in these 10 emerging markets, which is 4.5 per cent.

With the GEMcycle reading now honing in on this trend growth line, BofA forecasts that year-on-year economic growth will accelerate from 3.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015 to 4.3 per cent in 2016 and 4.8 per cent in 2017.

Alberto Ades, global emerging markets fixed income and FX strategist at BofA, cautions that the recovery “still appears fragile” and is unlikely to spread to most emerging economies until the second half of 2016.

Yet the picture is modestly upbeat. Although not designed as a “GDP tracker”, the GEMcycle, which is based on measures such as retail sales volumes, industrial production and stock market prices, has been a fairly reliable predictor of GDP growth in recent years, as the second chart shows.

The underlying country-by-country data throw up some striking contrasts, however. BofA’s economic conditions indicator for Russia, which had been on a broadly downward trend since 2010, bottomed around April 2015 and has risen ever since, driven by stronger electricity consumption and industrial production, as the third chart shows.

This suggests that Russia’s lengthy recession should now pass. “In our view, investment will be the main driver of the recovery as the economy bounces back from a 3.7 per cent contraction in 2015 to 0 per cent growth in 2016,” says Mr Ades.

BofA’s indicators for India and Poland are also trending upwards, as is that for Brazil, where the trade balance is being bolstered by the slide in the real, equity markets have stabilised and the decline in retail sales has slowed.

Nevertheless, Mr Ades said he still expected Brazil’s recession to “intensify”, with activity not starting to recover until late 2016.

China’s indicator has also rallied in recent months, reversing the falls witnessed earlier in 2015, although this week’s sell-off in Chinese equity markets and weak unofficial manufacturing survey data suggest the bounce may prove limited.

This may be particularly so if the forecast of David Cui, BofA’s head of China equity strategy, proves correct. Mr Cui predicts the Shanghai Composite index will fall 27 per cent during 2016 as a result of the unwinding of excess leverage.

In contrast, South Africa’s indicator is plummeting rapidly, as the final chart shows, with Mr Ades warning that the outlook for its economy is “extremely challenging”, given weak Chinese demand for commodities.

Yet, overall, if pan-EM growth is likely to be close to trend levels, at 4-4.5 per cent, this does raise the question of why doom and gloom is such a dominant emotion.

Mr Ades believes it comes down to the comparisons commentators are choosing to make, with many seemingly assuming the high growth rates witnessed earlier this century were normal.

“Compared to growth during 2005-2011, it looks horrible [now]. Then, emerging markets were growing at 6-7 per cent on average,” he says. “But compared to a more normal period, for example 1992-93 to 2000, average growth was not that different from what we are seeing now.”

This is turn raises the question of whether it was the 1990s and the current period that are anomalies, or the boom years of 2005-2011.

Mr Ades believes it was the latter. “We had very high liquidity, abnormally high credit growth, abnormally high trade growth with imports and exports growing at 25 per cent a year, and ever rising commodity prices.

“Those were the abnormal years. A lot of people got carried away.”

新兴市场愁云惨淡：中国经济增长放缓，大宗商品价格暴跌造成冲击，中东地区局势紧张，巴西和俄罗斯经济衰退，这些消息轮番登上新闻头条。

行业协会国际金融协会(Institute of International Finance)不久前表示，上述情况导致紧张不安的外国投资者前所未有地连续六个月从新兴市场国家撤出资金。

但是，抛开这些不绝于耳的噪音，我们可以说，尽管新兴市场的表现不怎么样，但形势真的没那么糟糕。

国际货币基金组织(IMF)预测，2016年，新兴市场经济增长率将从去年的略低于4%提高至4.5%，扭转连续五年的放缓趋势，并帮助推动全球经济增长率从3.1%提高至3.6%。



此外，这样的改善应该会出现在新兴市场相当多地方，按照IMF的预测，就连独联体（前苏联）以及拉美和加勒比海地区（2015年这两个地区的经济很可能出现了收缩）也都将要恢复增长。

怀疑论者或许还会说，IMF高估未来增长率、后来不得不调低预测值的情况出现过太多次了。

然而，美银美林(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)编制的数据适时出炉，使IMF当前的乐观态度增加了可信度。

不久前发布的最新数据显示，该银行自有的跟踪10个最大新兴市场经济体周期性商业状况的指数GEMcycle，在2015年12月已是连续第4个月上扬。



正如第一张图表所显示，目前这轮反弹已收复了该指数自2013年年中以来的跌幅。

图表中零对应的基准线代表美银对这10个新兴市场经济体趋势增长率的估计值，也就是4.5%。

由于目前GEMcycle指数开始接近这根趋势增长线，美银预测，同比经济增长率将从2015年第4季度的3.9%，提高至2016年的4.3%和2017年的4.8%。

美银全球新兴市场固定收益和外汇策略师阿尔贝托?埃兹(Alberto Ades)警告称，复苏“仍显脆弱”，到2016年下半年之前，复苏态势不太可能扩散到多数新兴经济体。

不过，前景基本乐观。虽然并非为“追踪国内生产总值(GDP)”而设计，但正如第二张图表所示，基于零售额、工业产量和股票市场价格等指标的GEMcycle，近年来已成为相当可靠的GDP增长率预测工具。



然而，基本的国别数据呈现出一些鲜明的对比。正如第三张图表所示，自2010年以来基本处于下行区间的美银俄罗斯经济状况指标，在2015年4月左右触底，随后在更强劲的用电量和工业产量数据带动下，进入了上行轨道。

这表明，俄罗斯漫长的经济衰退期现在应该结束了。 “在我们看来，投资将成为经济复苏的主要动力，俄罗斯经济增长率将从2015年的-3.7%反弹至2016年的零增长，”埃兹表示。

美银的印度和波兰指标也呈现上行趋势。巴西也是一样。在巴西，贸易收支得到了里亚尔下跌的支撑，股市企稳，零售销售额的跌势已经放缓。

然而，埃兹表示，他仍预计巴西的经济衰退会“加剧”，直到2016年晚些时候之前，经济活动不会开始复苏。

近几个月来，中国的指标也上涨了，扭转了2015年早些时候的下跌趋势，不过近期中国股市的抛售行情和疲弱的非官方制造业调查数据表明，反弹可能会很有限。

情况或许尤其如此，如果美银中国股票策略主管崔伟(David Cui)的预测事实上正确的话。崔伟预测，由于去除过高杠杆率的影响，2016年全年上证综指(Shanghai Composite)将下跌27%。

相比之下，正如最后一张图表所示，南非的指标正迅速下降。埃兹警告称，鉴于中国对大宗商品的需求疲弱，南非经济的前景“极具挑战性”。



不过，总体而言，如果整个新兴市场的增长率可能接近4%至4.5%的趋势水平，这确实引出了一个疑问：为何眼下市场整体情绪如此悲观和沮丧？

埃兹认为，原因在于评论人士选取的对照基准，其中许多人似乎假定，本世纪初的高增长率为正常水平。

“与2005年至2011年间对比的话，（现在的）增长率看来很糟糕。那时，新兴市场的平均增长率为6%至7%，”他说， “但与一个更正常时期（例如1992年、1993年至2000年）对比的话，现在的平均增长率跟那时相差并不太多。”

这反过来又引发了一个疑问：反常的到底是上世纪90年代和当前时期，还是2005年至2011年的繁荣期？

埃兹认为，后者才是反常的。“当时，我们看到非常高的流动性，异常高的信贷增长，异常高的贸易增长，进口和出口的年增长率达到25%，大宗商品价格也不断上升。”

“那些年是不正常的。很多人被冲昏了头脑。”

译者/邢嵬