Data Flash:Asia Economic Diary,Jan 15-19

Bank Indonesia (BI) meets next Thursday. We expect BI to keep its policy rateunchanged at 4.25% amid limited inflationary pressure. Further ahead, however,we see rising inflation in 2H to prompt rate hikes by BI. Risks to our outlook oninflation and therefore rates remain tilted to the upside, especially as oil pricescontinue to head higher.

    The Bank of Korea (BoK) also meets next Thursday and we see no change inits policy rate. Although we maintain our view that the next 25bps rate hike islikely to take place in Q3, risks to our rates view are tilted to the upside, ashousing price inflation continues to accelerate. Despite the government measuresto tame housing prices, Gangnam housing price inflation accelerated sharply inDecember, to 5.6%yoy from 4.3% in November. Higher-than-expected oil pricesalso pose upside risks to our outlook on inflation and therefore rates. Moreover,although the historical data suggest otherwise, we cannot rule out the possibilitythat minimum wage hikes resulting in meaningful rise in inflation ahead.

    We expect China’s GDP growth to decelerate to 6.6%yoy from 6.8% in Q4,weighed down by weaker domestic demand growth, amid government-enforceddeleveraging. Risks to our growth forecast are, however, tilted to the upside dueto the sharp acceleration in export growth in Q4. As far as its high frequencydata are concerned, we expect China’s IP growth to remain stable at 6.1% yoyin December, the same as in November, while fixed asset investment and retailsales growth slow by 0.1ppts to 7.1% and 10.1%, respectively, in December.

    Continued mixed trade reports from other EM Asia economies are likely. Inparticular, we expect Indonesia and Thailand’s export growth to accelerateto 14.5%yoy and 14.8%, respectively, in December, from 13.2% and 13.4%in November. In contrast, we see India’s export growth to slow to 20.4% inDecember, from 30.5% in November, while Singapore’s fall to 3.8% from 9.6%in the same period.