CEIC Insights | China real-estate; Mexico exports; Aussie nowcast; Philippine inflation
Key analysis from the past seven days driven by CEIC's powerful blend of traditional and alternative economic data
Data stories of the week:
China's real-estate and construction in historic context
A new range of data added to the CEIC platform takes a deeper dive into China's construction and real-estate industries.
We charted real-estate investment against construction output (which also includes non-residential construction and other engineering projects).
Going back two decades, we can demarcate four distinct eras:
Rapid growth (2000-2013). Amid urbanization and rising household incomes, the demand for real estate soared. Construction output posted an average annual growth rate of about 20%.
Slower growth (2014-2019). Chinese cities were still booming, but the construction output growth rate slowed to about 10% per year. Government regulation and tighter financing were factors in the real-estate slowdown. This period also shows the closest correlation between real-estate investment and construction output of any era in our chart.
Pandemic volatility (2020-21). Unsurprisingly, construction and investment plunged, and then snapped back. New regulations also weighed on the real-estate sector.
Decline and adjustment (2022-). Real-estate investment and construction output decouple. Real-estate investment continues to shrink year-on-year amid demographic change, financial crises at development companies and macroeconomic pressures.
But construction output growth (just) remains in positive territory. The share of industrial construction has been steadily rising since 2020, driven by advanced manufacturing facilities and changes to global supply chains.
CEIC users can click through to more charts on the share of offices in the construction mix, developers’ land deals, floor space sold and more.
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Australia nowcast shows inflation fading as once-hawkish central bank finally cuts
For quite a long time, the Reserve Bank of Australia had been one of the world's more hawkish central banks, remaining concerned about stubborn inflation. But the RBA finally cut interest rates for the first time since November 2020 this month.
CEIC's weekly inflation nowcast supports the RBA's move: our proprietary, machine learning- driven model projects that headline inflation slowed in January. (The official data will be released as late as Feb. 26.)
Our nowcast predicts price growth was 2.35% in January, down from 2.45% in December. That would be the first slowdown after?three consecutive months of acceleration.
The RBA still expressed some concern about inflation risk, with several labor indicators coming in stronger than expected.
CEIC users can click through to charts on the RBA's preferred measure for underlying price growth – "trimmed mean" inflation, which has been slowing more than expected for some time.
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Examining Mexico's border states with US exports at risk
CEIC continues to watch Donald Trump's tariff plans. A temporary exemption for Mexico expires at the end of this month. To identify regions most at risk, we are revisiting one of our recently added datasets.
Some 83% of Mexico's total exports go to the US. The six states bordering the US account for almost 60% of that sum. Vehicles make up roughly 70% of the nation's total exports, and Coahuila is particularly specialized in autos. (Companies including 通用汽车 and Stellantis have facilities in the state.)
However, Coahuila and Baja California exports are hardly growing at all. The best border-state performer on this basis is Chihuahua, whose exports rose at a 24% pace year-on-year. The states posting the best export growth are exposed to industries where demand is more global than American-oriented.
CEIC users can tap more charts examining regional export growth. Guerrero – far from the US border, and best known for the resort of Acapulco – posted the highest growth, at almost 80% year-on-year; its export industries are focused on agriculture and mining. Also known for mining is the central state of Zacatecas, which came second (at 62% growth).
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Our daily Philippines food index shows promising trends ahead of official CPI
Philippine inflation is mostly driven by food, which is often imported – and accounts for almost a third of the consumer price index (CPI). In that context, CEIC's proprietary Daily Food Price Index is showing promising trends.
Retail food price increases in the Manila region continued to slow from January through February.
Our high-frequency indicator lets CEIC users get an edge ahead of the peaks and troughs of official CPI, which is not released until March 5. We create our index by from retail prices for selected major agriculture and fishery commodities.
After disinflation and even deflation in mid-2024, food CPI had rebounded to a four-month high of 4% in January. CEIC's daily food price index was an early indicator, demonstrating a pick-up and the end of deflation as early as September. The moderation in mid-January might not have fully been reflected in food CPI due to reporting lags.
This could be reassuring for the Philippines’ central bank ( Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas , or BSP); observers had been predicting fewer rate cuts in 2025 than previously expected.
CEIC users can click through for more detail on the contribution of various food groups to the overall food price index. Rice, fish and vegetables figure prominently.
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Trump tariffs drive US uncertainty index to post-COVID high
As President Trump makes the headlines, we can quantify his short-term impact by watching an indicator that "reads the news."
The Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) Index for the US is based on newspaper coverage. The index spiked on Feb. 9, when Trump announced 25% tariffs on aluminum and steel imports.
It's notable that it reached roughly the same level as it did on Sept. 11, 2001, and exceeded the levels reached during the global financial crisis. The all-time highs were reached during the outbreak of the pandemic.
The EPU index scans articles, looking for three sets of terms: 1) "economic" or "economy"; 2) "uncertain" or "uncertainty"; and 3) a set of government-related words: "legislation," "deficit," "regulation," "Congress," " Federal Reserve Board " and "White House." An article counts for the index if it contains at least one term from all three groups.
The chart uses a 30-day moving average to smooth out volatility from one-time events.
(CEIC users can click through for our analysis of a similar indicator: the text-based computational analysis index from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco .)
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Other News from ISI Markets
The Longest Historical Revised Data – Elevate Your Analysis with CEIC's Point-in-Time Data
When it comes to economic data, reliability is everything. CEIC's Point-in-Time (PiT) datasets include over 10 years of meticulously maintained revisions – the longest revision history in the market for the data universe we cover. Access over 25,000 key economic indicators from G20 and ASEAN nations, collected from over 450+ sources (with over 80% from difficult to source data). CEIC ensures your models reflect real-world decision-making as it happens.?
A deep dive into ASEAN with CEIC: Exploring Southeast Asia’s key “connector economies” at a moment of geopolitical change
Are you a portfolio strategist or investment manager interested in some of the world’s fastest-growing markets – and how they might be affected by US tariffs? We invite you to download our ASEAN chart pack, which examines Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.?
We examine ground-up indicators, such as consumer spending and inflation. And we explore impacts from outside forces – especially, US monetary policy and the international trade environment.
We also highlight regional outliers: Vietnam’s FDI boom has made it ASEAN’s fastest-growing economy, while Thailand has suffered from deflation and political tensions.
Get an edge on these economies with datasets from CEIC – the winner of Waters Technology’s 2024 award for the Best Alternative Data Provider to the Buyside.
Get an edge on the economy with alternative datasets
Get an edge on the economy with alternative datasets from CEIC – the winner of Waters Technology’s 2024 award for the Best Alternative Data Provider to the Buyside.
We invite you to download our chart pack. We use proxy indicators like card-payment data, shipping traffic and road haulage tolls to project retail sales and trade figures – and fill in the gaps for countries’ official economic statistics. Asset-allocation decisions can be linked to currency movements using exclusive fund-flow data from EPFR (an ISI Markets company). And as climate change disrupts agriculture, we show how extreme rain and heat can predict commodity prices.
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