Impact of Global Economic Crisis on the Malaysian
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1 Draft: [191009] IMPACT OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS ON THE MALAYSIAN AUTO-PARTS INDUSTRY Ragayah Haji Mat Zin & Faridah Shahadan Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS) Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Background Paper for Conference on the " The Impact of the Global Economic Slowdown on Poverty and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific", 28-30 Sept 2009, Hanoi INTRODUCTION The current global economic crisis, which originated from the sub-prime financial turmoil in the United States (US) in mid-2007, has left more than half the major world economies in recession and experiencing the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although the developed countries have announced large economic stimulus packages exceeding USD3 trillion, global growth weakened markedly in the fourth quarter of 2008 and continued its downward trend in the first quarter of 2009. The global economic environment is expected to worsen in 2009, with the US expected to contract by 1.6%, the United Kingdom 2.8%, and Japan 2.6%. In the region, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore are projected to shrink by 2%, 4% and 4.9%, respectively. While China and India are expected to record positive growth of 6.7% and 5.1% respectively, the growth is significantly lower than in previous years. The quarterly growth rates of real gross domestic product (GDP) for selected countries since 2007 are shown in Table 1. The Malaysian economy has achieved healthy growth in the past, due largely to being an open economy whereby international trade now accounts for almost 200% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and a robust capital market also contributed to the growth of the economy. However, as a highly open economy, Malaysia is likely to be impacted through the following: Exports would decline in line with deteriorating world demand. For example, exports declined by 27.8% in January 2009 Commodity exports, in particular, crude oil and gas as well as palm oil have experienced sharp fall in prices Decline in FDI in line with the global recession, where FDI inflows are expected to be half of that in 2008, from RM51 billion to RM26 billion RM51 billion The global meltdown in equity markets resulted in a significant decline in Bursa Malaysia, which had adversely impacted investor and consumer sentiment. As a consequence, Malaysia had revised the growth forecast from the original 5.4% first to 3.5% in the last quarter of 2008, then to between -1% to 1% in the first quarter of 2009 and finally to - 4% to -5% in the second quarter of 2009. However, the global economy showed signs of stabilization during the second quarter of 2009 (Malaysia 2009a: 1). The export industries in Asia in general and in Malaysia in particular are closely connected through value chains through trade and production systems in Europe, Japan and the United States of America (USA) and many serve as part of the international production networks. As in other Asian countries, many of these industries are subcontracting production to firms and establishments in both the formal and informal sector. Moreover, workers in these 2 Table 1: Real Gross Domestic Product for Selected Countries (% annual Change) 2007 2007 2008 2008 2009 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Developed Economies United States 2.0 1.4 1.9 2.8 2.5 1.1 2.0 1.6 0.0 -1.9 -3.3 -3.9 Japan 2.3 3.4 2.2 1.9 1.9 -0.7 1.3 0.6 -0.3 -4.3 -8.7 -6.4 UK 2.6 2.4 2.7 2.7 2.4 0.7 2.5 1.8 0.5 -1.8 -4.9 -5.4 Euro Area 2.7 3.2 2.6 2.6 2.1 0.7 2.1 1.4 0.5 -1.7 -4.6 -4.6 NIEs South Korea 5.1 4.5 5.3 4.9 5.7 2.2 5.5 4.3 3.1 -3.4 -4.2 -2.5 Hong Kong 6.4 5.5 6.2 6.8 6.9 2.4 7.3 4.1 1.5 -2.6 -7.8 -3.8 Taiwan 5.7 3.8 5.5 7.0 6.4 0.1 6.3 4.6 -1.0 -8.6 -10.1 -7.5 Singapore 7.8 7.0 8.6 9.5 5.5 1.1 6.7 2.5 0.0 -4.2 -9.5 -3.3 India1 9.0 9.7 9.2 9.0 9.3 6.7 8.6 7.8 7.7 5.8 5.8 n.a China 13.0 11.7 11.9 11.5 11.2 9.0 10.6 10.1 9.0 6.8 6.1 7.9 ASEAN 4 Thailand 4.9 4.4 4.4 5.1 5.7 2.6 6.0 5.3 3.9 -4.2 -7.1 -4.9 Philippines 7.1 6.9 8.3 7.1 6.4 3.8 3.9 4.2 4.6 2.9 0.4 n.a Indonesia 6.3 6.0 6.6 6.6 5.9 6.1 6.3 6.4 6.1 5.2 4.4 4.0 Malaysia 6.2 5.4 5.6 6.5 7.2 4.6 7.4 6.6 4.8 0.1 -6.2 -3.9 1 India : fiscal year April – March Sources : Malaysia (2009a). industries and their value chain enterprises are served by many formal and informal establishments such as transport, food and catering and others. With the severe downturn of the economy, the objective of this study is to examine how the enterprises, their workers and families as well as the supporting services are impacted by the current crisis. At the same time, this study will emphasize on the gender impact of the crisis by linking the value chain labor market effects and the gender implications. For this purpose, we have chosen to study the auto parts industry based on two considerations. First, the world automotive industry was badly hit by the financial turmoil (see KPMG International 2008). The authors thought that it would be interesting how the Malaysian auto industry and auto parts sub-sector would be affected by the crisis. Second, we were given very short and tight schedule of five weeks to carry out the survey and write the report. Thus, we opted for the auto parts industry instead of the electrical and electronics (E&E) industry as we already had some contacts with players in the former industry. The paper will be organized in the following way. The next section will describe the macroeconomic impact and the policy responses of the Government in handling the negative challenge of the crisis. Section 3 will explore the impact of the crisis on the auto-parts industry in general while Section 4 will analyze the case study of impact of crisis on auto parts enterprises. Section 5 will also discuss the case study of impact of crisis on the affected workers in the auto parts industry that are surveyed specifically for this study while Section 6 will look at the impact on the affected workers' households or families. Wherever relevant, the discussion will be 3 enhanced by the input from the focus group discussions as well as those of the respondents from the supporting industries. Section 7 will conclude the paper. MACROECONOMIC IMPACT AND POLICY RESPONSES GDP and Sectoral Performance, Labor Market and Trade in Auto Parts Table 2 shows that the Malaysian economy had reasonable growth in 2007 (6.2%) and 2008 (4.6%). In fact, growth was still reasonably strong in the first two quarters of 2008, buoyed by the services, manufacturing and agriculture sectors, although growth of the mining sector had turned negative since the second quarter. By the first quarter of 2009, the Malaysian economy had contracted by 6.2% due to the deepening global economic recession that affected the performance of the domestic economy. All sectors, except for construction, registered lower output. The services sector registered a mild contraction of -0.2% due to the lackluster performance in sub-sectors closely linked to external trade and financial activities. The manufacturing sector deteriorated further by 17.6% compared to -8.8% in Q4 2008. Production of passenger cars fell by 18.9% in Q1 2009 compared to a decline of 24.9% in Q4 2008. Owing to lower production of palm oil and rubber as well as logging activities, the agriculture sector fell by 4.3% while the mining sector shrank due to lower production of crude oil and natural gas. The construction sector managed to buck the trend because of ongoing government development projects and the implementation of the First Stimulus Package. Table 2: Malaysia: Real Gross Domestic Product by Sector (% annual Change) 2007 2007 2008 2008 2009 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 GDP 6.2 5.4 5.6 6.5 7.2 4.6 7.4 6.6 4.8 0.1 -6.2 -3.9 Agriculture 1.4 3.0 -2.3 1.1 3.9 4.0 6.5 6.3 3.3 0.5 -4.3 0.3 Mining 2.0 -1.1 5.9 0.6 2.9 -0.8 3.6 -0.5 -0.3 -5.7 -5.2 -2.6 Manufacturing 3.1 2.1 1.6 3.3 5.5 1.3 7.0 5.6 1.8 -8.8 -17.6 -14.5 Construction 4.7 4.2 5.0 4.9 4.9 2.1 5.3 3.9 1.2 -1.6 1.1 2.8 Services 9.6 9.3 9.5 10.4 9.3 7.2 8.4 7.9 7.1 5.7 -0.2 1.6 Source: Malaysia (2009a).