HONG KONG: With US and European customers' spending power likely to take years to restore, Asia's intra-regional trade and growing domestic consumption will become a new growth engine to replace the region's reliance on the West, according to one of Japan's top financial institutions, Daiwa Securities SMBC.

"We expect most Asian economies to rebound to their potential growth rates in 2010, and for Asia to continue to lead global growth over the next five years. Emerging market demand is steadily replacing OECD demand faster than many believe," said Craig Irvine, co-head of regional research at Daiwa, at a press conference in Hong Kong yesterday.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization of high-income, developed countries, on which Asia's export-driven economies have depended over the last 40 years.

"We will see an export-driven economy in Asia, but the trade structure is changing," said Irvine.

Asia's exports to the US and Europe declined to 30 percent of the regional total in 2008, down from nearly 40 percent in 1998. Over the same period, intraregional exports as a share of total exports in emerging Asia rose to 54 percent from 46 percent, according to statistics from HSBC.

"Intra-Asian trade flows are the fastest growing in the world," says Lawrence Webb, global head of trade and supply chain at HSBC, in a research note, adding, "This trend has accelerated since the financial crisis."

HSBC predicts that trade among Asian countries will grow at an annual average rate of 12.2 percent until 2020. The region's trade with the US is projected to grow 7.3 percent annually over the same period.

The Tokyo-based brokerage house also overweight the consumption sector in Asia, which is home to roughly 40 percent of the world's population.

"Asia's consumption is stronger than lots of people expected," Irvine told reporters, predicting, "Emerging market consumption will exceed (that of the) US in four to five years."

An optimistic outlook is prompting Daiwa to raise capital to boost its Asian business. The firm said last week that it will increase its capital by about 100 billion yen to boost its Asian business operations by next April, doubling its overseas operating capital which stood at 90 billion yen as of September.

Daiwa said it will also increase the number of its personnel by about 300 in the Asian stock and derivatives business by around 100 for underwriting and mergers and acquisitions operations. Currently, Daiwa has about 650 staff members for these operations.

With the addition of roughly 400 new members, the overall number of staff in the Asian and Oceanian region by March 2012 will reach about 1,120, according to the brokerage firm.

(HK Edition 11/26/2009 page4)