EMI edges ahead

The FINANCIAL — Growth in the emerging markets remained lacklustre despite increasing marginally in September, according to the HSBC Emerging Markets Index.

The index rose to 50.8 from 50.7 in August. The average EMI for the third quarter was 50.3, the lowest since the first quarter of 2009 during the global financial crisis. The goods-producing sector showed the best performance since May but growth rates for manufacturing output and services were weak in September, according to HSBC Group.

Output rose modestly in China, Brazil and Russia, while India posted the third successive fall and the fastest decline since March 2009, reflecting weakness in the service sector. New business growth was weak across the 16 emerging economies covered, and the level of business outstanding continued to fall. But employment steadied after two months of job cuts.

“The September PMIs™ show economic conditions in emerging markets are showing marginal improvement, although the data remains disappointing overall," Pablo Goldberg, Global Head of Emerging Markets Research, HSBC, said. "About half of the emerging market manufacturing PMIs™ are back above 50, with three quarters of the countries covered seeing improvements, compared to less than half a month ago. Most strikingly, headline PMI™ manufacturing is above 50 in China for the second month in a row, and the recovery in the developed world is continuing. These developments should help anchor economic activity in the rest of the emerging markets, in particular its export sector. In fact, new export order PMIs™ are showing some improvement in places like Mexico, the most open Asian economies, and Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa,” he added.

Goldberg said that the September PMI™ figures suggested that domestic economic conditions were still weakening in emerging markets, with the future output index for manufacturing outperforming that of services. The EMI showed that input prices in September rose at the fastest rate for seven months, though the pace of inflation remained weak against its eight-year average, mainly because of relatively weak price pressures in China, according to HSBC Group.