Thailand's report Monday underscored the fears. The country's economy -- Southeast Asia's second largest behind Indonesia -- contracted 4.3% in the fourth quarter compared with the year-earlier period, considerably worse than analysts expected. The government slashed its 2009 forecast to between 0% and a negative 1% contraction, from earlier projections of 3% to 4% growth, meaning Thailand will almost certainly enter a recession this year.
The Thai economy "will be likely to get worse" before it gets better as exports stay weak, says Sriyan Pietersz, an analyst at J.P. Morgan in Bangkok.
Southeast Asia had looked somewhat stronger than the rest of Asia and many other emerging markets, thanks in part to the reserves its governments built up after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Many local companies and consumers, burned by currency devaluations in the late 1990s, avoided the excessive foreign borrowing and other risks now weighing on Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Within the region, Indonesia and the Philippines are still performing better than most emerging nations, mostly because their large consumer markets are offsetting declines in export revenue. Both countries posted growth of more than 4% in the fourth quarter.
Indonesia faces further fallout from swooning prices for copper, palm oil and other commodity exports, and the Philippines is counting on remittances from foreign-based workers to maintain domestic spending, even though a weaker global economy could trim those funds.
The area's other big players are starting to resemble Taiwan and Korea, where the economies have been sent into tailspins by excessive reliance on exports.
In Malaysia, a hub of electronics manufacturing, growth was at 6.7% as recently as the second quarter of 2008. Analysts now are forecasting only slight growth for the fourth quarter of 2008 and a contraction of minus 0.5% or worse for 2009. Auto sales fell 17.5% in January from a year earlier.
In Singapore, the government said last week that nonoil exports fell 35% in January from the previous year to $6.6 billion, its worst performance since records began 30 years ago.
The city-state is bracing for a contraction of between 2% and 5% in 2009, according to the government. The economy fared this badly once before, in 2001, when the U.S. tech slump led to a 2.4% fall in Singapore's gross domestic product.
At Singapore's port -- one of the world's largest -- hundreds of ships linger offshore with no cargo to transport. Guy Lamb, managing director of Singapore-based Island Shipbrokers, which charters oil tankers, says the company has maintained its volumes but rates have fallen 75% since a peak at the beginning of 2008.
Property prices, fueled in recent years by foreign demand, also are in free fall. A report by Credit Suisse last month said 200,000 foreigners could leave Singapore over the next two years due to job losses in services and manufacturing. Property prices, down 8% from their peak in 2008, could fall by as much as 40% this year, Credit Suisse warned.
Singapore-based Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, one of the world's largest chip makers, said last month it was shedding 600 workers amid forecasts of a record loss in the first quarter.
Tapping its official reserves for the first time, Singapore in January announced a $13.6 billion stimulus package that cut corporate taxes and included measures to spur bank lending and help households. Other Southeast Asian nations have announced stimulus plans.
Without a turnaround in global demand to restore export growth, such measures are likely to have only limited impact, economists say. Malaysia plans a second stimulus program that may be considerably larger than its inital effort, according to media reports; economists say other Southeast Asian nations may have to follow suit.
In Thailand, some analysts noted that the recent contraction reflected one-time losses from November and December, when antigovernment protesters shut down the country's main airport and blocked tourist arrivals. But Mr. Pietersz at J.P. Morgan says the key culprit was a nearly 9% drop in exports in the quarter.
That problem accelerated in January, when exports tumbled 26.5% from a year earlier. Thai officials have said manufacturers could cut as many as 100,000 jobs this year as exports fade.—Wilawan Watcharasakwet contributed to this article.
Write to Tom Wright at
tom.wright@wsj.com and Patrick Barta at
patrick.barta@wsj.com-----------------------------------------------------------
ดูกราฟจะเห็นว่า ไตรมาส 3 ปีที่ผ่านมา ไทยยังมีตัวเลขที่เป็นบวก
อยู่ แต่จู่ๆ กลับตกมาเป็นตรงข้ามคือติดลบในไตรมาสที่ 4 ซึ่งแบบนี้เขาจะ
เรียกว่า Sharp drop เลย
