O Financial Times escreveu um ótimo texto sobre a crise econômica na China, que atinge especialmente os investimentos imobiliários.
Vejam parte do texto abaixo:
Towers where no lights burn at heart of
China’s puzzle
By Jamil Anderlini in Yuncheng
In a steel and coal-mining region of 5m people in the Chinese heartland, signs of economic slowdown are everywhere.
Forests of newly built but nearly abandoned apartment complexes with
names such as Fortune Plaza and Golden Riverside ring central Yuncheng while,
on the outskirts of town, the district’s largest steel mill has gone bust,
leaving mountains of unpaid debt and nearly 10,000 idle workers.
“I used to bring lots of investors and steel people out here to visit
the plant,” says Zhang Pu, a taxi driver waiting outside an empty hotel next to
the headquarters of Highsee Group, the troubled steelmaker. “These days the
only people who want to come here are local peasant farmers or debt collectors.”
China’s economy expanded 7.4 per cent in the first quarter of the year
from the same period a year earlier, a sharp slowdown from 7.7 per cent growth
in the fourth quarter of 2013.
That is still an enviable rate by the standard of most countries but in
Yuncheng and other cities across China, the headline figure masks a multitude
of growing problems.
The main reason for the slowdown is a slump in fixed asset investment,
the biggest driver of the Chinese economy.
In the first three months of the year, investment grew 17.6 per cent
from the same period a year earlier, the slowest pace since late 2002.
The slide was largely owing to declining real estate investment, which also experienced
its weakest growth in more than a decade. The situation is certain to get worse
in the coming months as new housing floor space under construction contracted
27.2 per cent in the first quarter.
That was largely a reaction to declining sales, which fell 5.7 per cent
in terms of floor space in the first quarter from a year earlier, with the fall
especially pronounced in smaller inland cities such as Yuncheng.
“Our surveys show clear divergence in price trends with first-tier major
cities experiencing mildly rising housing prices,” Sheng Laiyun, spokesman for
China’s National Bureau of Statistics, said on Wednesday at a press conference
to announce first-quarter GDP. “In some second-tier cities prices are shaky and
in third and fourth-tier cities, especially those with ample supply, prices
have come down.”
The fate of China’s overheated real estate market is absolutely critical
to the health of the overall economy.
Real estate construction directly accounted for 16 per cent of GDP in
2013, according to estimates from Nomura.
At that level China is approaching a dependence on property last seen in
Ireland and Spain before the bursting of their bubbles.
In the past, and particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis,
Beijing has turned to credit-fuelled property construction as the quickest and
easiest way to boost flagging growth.
...
But with so many freshly built apartment towers already standing empty
across the country, another round of manic, state-sanctioned real estate
construction would amount to “yin zhen zhi ke” – “drinking poison to quench
one’s thirst”.
“It is the lack of final demand, existence of excess capacities and
barriers to private investment that have curbed China’s corporate investment
and overall growth,” said Wang Tao, an economist at UBS. “Against this
background, stronger credit growth will not lead to sustained stronger
corporate investment growth, but would likely lead to a continued build-up of
unsustainable leverage levels in China’s problematic local government debt and
property sectors.”
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário