Gross domestic product grew 3.9 per cent in the three months through March from a year earlier, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in its final estimate on Thursday. The figure compares with a median forecast of a 3.6 per cent growth in a Bloomberg survey of economists, and the government’s advanced estimate of 3.8 per cent.
On a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis, GDP fell 0.6 per cent, versus a forecast of 1 per cent contraction.
“A technical recession where you have two quarters of consecutive quarter-to-quarter negative growth, that is a possibility,” Beh Swan Gin, permanent secretary at the trade ministry, told reporters. “However, that doesn’t necessarily equate to a full-blown economic recession” as seen in the year on year GDP numbers.
First quarter’s better-than-expected result was driven by manufacturing and export activity as businesses rushed to avoid the imposition of higher US tariffs.
The data shows how the US-China trade war and China’s sluggish recovery were seeping deeper into the region at the start of the year. Since then, the world’s two biggest economies have called a truce, agreeing to a 90-day negotiating window under which they have lowered tariffs on each other’s goods.
