Slowdown Should Not Concern

Preliminary estimates based mainly on the first two months of the year, show real quarter-on-quarter GDP growth slowed to just 1.2% in Q106 from 12.5% in the last quarter of 2005, on an seasonally-adjusted, annualised basis. While GDP was still 9.1% higher than at this time last year, this is the slowest quarterly growth rate since a global electronics demand downturn caused negative growth in Q105. Though the economy has undoubtedly cooled considerably, we feel this first quarter performance still represents a healthy start to the year. After achieving double-digit growth for three quarters in a row, we had been

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