Hong Kong exports set to grow at slower pace next year, says Trade Development Council

Hong Kong's exports will increase at a slightly slower pace of 3 per cent next year, the Trade Development Council (TDC) predicts.

As year's end approaches, the trade promotion body expects exports this year to increase by 4 per cent in value and 2 per cent in volume from last year, according to its latest estimates. It says per-unit product prices will increase by 2 per cent from last year.

The forecasts were made after the government announced that exports were up 3.8 per cent in value and 2.8 per cent in volume in the first 10 months year-on-year.

Exports next year were expected to rise 3 per cent in both value and volume and product prices were expected to remain unchanged, the council's director of research Nicholas Kwan Ka-ming said yesterday.

"Improvements in the global economy will boost sales volume next year," principal economist Daniel Poon Wing-choi added. "But due to lower costs and uncertainties over the European and Japanese economies, exporters will be under pressure to keep product prices unchanged."

Oil prices had declined and increases in labour costs on the mainland had slowed during the year, he explained.

The result of combining price and volume factors would be a slower increase in the value of exports for the year, he said.