This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on November 30, 2017 - December 6, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is among the select economies, including Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, to benefit from the booming electronics export activities in Asia-Pacific, according to S&P Global Ratings.

“Improved external demand from a synchronised global upturn is manifesting itself in an electronics export boom in Asia-Pacific.

“The main beneficiaries have been the Tiger Economies (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) plus Malaysia, Thailand, and even Japan. Korea and Malaysia have done particularly well on the export front in recent months, and growth in both economies has surprised on the upside, as has Taiwan’s,” said S&P in a statement yesterday.

Overall, it noted that Asia-Pacific economies are ending 2017 on a relatively high note since the region’s macro outlook and trade risk profile have improved over the past few months.

In particular, the region’s two largest economies, China and Japan, continue to report high growth figures, with China consistently surprising on the upside, it said.

China reported an average 6.9% growth in the first three quarters of 2017 — compared with the country’s target of 6.5% or higher — while Japan’s third-quarter annualised growth of 1.4% represents the country’s seventh consecutive quarter of expansion.

“Now that the Party Congress in China has passed, it remains to be seen how much tolerance the authorities have for the slowdown in growth that must accompany their well-publicised deleveraging drive,” said Paul Gruenwald, S&P Global Ratings’ chief economist for Asia-Pacific.

“In our view, the current macro-credit path remains unsustainable,” Gruenwald said.

As for Japan, it was noted that the third-quarter growth drivers were all external, which raised growth sustainability issues as well as concerns about reflating the economy.