Taiwan -3.8%, Singapore -16.3% and Thailand -3.3%. These figures send a clear message. On the basis of seasonally adjusted figures for the month of April, they illustrate the scale of the slide in industrial production on the previous month. It is obvious that the earthquake in Japan on 11 March 2011 triggered grave disruptions to supply chains between the closely linked economies in the Asian region. We expect this to have a clearly negative impact on economic growth at least in the current quarter and are penciling in a marked slowdown in growth for the Asian region as a whole.
Asia: Industrial production plummets in April
However, as things stand, it is not likely that this slowdown will continue over the rest of the year. Rather, economic momentum is likely to pick up again in the second half of the year, buoyed by catch-up effects in the wake of the recent production losses along with a positive boost from reconstruction in Japan. The extent to which growth forecasts for the year as a whole need to be revised hinges crucially on how swiftly production processes in industry return to normal. Pivotal will be whether the traditionally higher demand for electricity in Japan in the summer will cause