Fifteen Asia-Pacific countries signed an agreement over the weekend to form the biggest trade group in history, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), after nearly ten years of negotiations.

With the local Covid-19 situation becoming more contained, Hong Kong’s economy registered some improvement in the third quarter. During July to September, GDP shrank by 3.5% year-on-year, compared to the contractions of 9.1% and 9% in Q1 and Q2 respectively.

The 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has concluded its fifth plenary session in Beijing, laying out the framework of the 14th Five Year Plan – a blueprint for the nation’s economic and social development in the next few years – as well as ambitions for the longer term.

As Shenzhen Special Economic Zone celebrates its 40th anniversary, a new plan from the Central Government has set out the future direction of the city, including greater freedom to enact reforms.

As the coronavirus continues to weigh on the global economy, Hong Kong’s external trade remains sluggish. In July 2020, the values of total exports and imports of goods dropped by 3% and 3.4% respectively. For the first seven months of the year, exports and imports fell by 6.3% and 8.5% respectively.

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics,” said Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate in economics in 1987. This “productivity paradox” seems to have re-emerged, more than three decades after Solow made his remark.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered its global growth forecast, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to unfold, creating a more negative impact on economic activities in the first half of 2020 than originally expected. The IMF now predicts global output to shrink by 4.9% this year, 1.9 percentage points below its April forecast.

The Hong Kong economy contracted at the sharpest pace on record in the first quarter of 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted virtually all types of economic activity in the city. The advance GDP estimate for the first three months of the year shows a year-on-year contraction of 8.9%, worse than during both the Asian Financial Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis, when the city’s economy shrank by 8.1% and 7.5% respectively at their lowest points (Figure 1).

Against the backdrop of the extraordinary measures being introduced by many governments to curb the spread of the coronavirus, and business activities coming to a halt across the world, financial institutions are busy revising their growth forecasts downwards.