Speaking at the Secondary Commodities Markets conference in London yesterday, National Australia Bank head of research Nick Parsons said economies in the Far East are still growing rapidly.
He pointed out that while western economies experienced recession in 2008, there was only a slowdown in countries such as China and India and no recession. Parsons added that despite the current crisis in the west, Asian countries were still seeing very high growth.
“There was no recession in the emerging world,” he said. “Our models show lower growth in emerging markets. Growth is lower than we anticipated six months ago, but there is still strong growth nonetheless.”
As part of his presentation, he noted that with China growing at 9.6 per cent this year, a predicted 8 per cent next year and 7.6 per cent the year after, with its current rate of growth China’s economy will double in size over the next decade. While India will double at almost the same rate, meaning that with two countries that house one third of the world’s population doubling in the next ten years, “that will impact on the demand equation”.
He added: “It is worth remembering there isn’t a recession in the global economy. Global growth is still around the average of the last decade.”
However, UK growth was likely to be among the worst in the developed world he revealed, which would continue to impact on lending to businesses. But he said that bank finance was still available for agriculture, commodities, renewable energy and infrastructure. With many recycling companies involved in at least two of these, and possibly three or four, that while still not easy, banks were more likely to be favourable towards investing in recycling companies.
The Secondary Commodities Markets conference was held in London yesterday and was organised by scrap-ex.
