The Chinese economy grew by 9.6 percent, 0.6 percentage points more than earlier estimates, in 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday after discovering that the service sector had played a greater role than thought earlier.

The NBS economic census results also show that the country achieved greater success in reducing its energy intensity, or the amount of energy used to generate each unit of GDP, last year. It used 5.2 percent less energy per unit of GDP, much less than the 4.6 percent as reported earlier.

The country set a goal to cut energy intensity by 20 percent during the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10).

“With the revision, the goal is more attainable,” said Yang Fuqiang, director of WWF’s global climate change solutions. Preliminary calculations show energy intensity could be 17 percent lower than the 2005 level by the end of this year, falling by another 4 percent next year, he said, and dismissed concerns over the country’s ability to achieve that goal.

Yang said the decline in energy intensity in 2008 and this year was largely because of the global financial crisis. The country used 3.35 percent less energy to generate each dollar worth of GDP in the first half of this year, the National Development and Reform Commission said in August. Yang said it might drop by another 3 percent in the second half.

With its growing power, China could allot more funds and achieve more technology breakthroughs to help achieve another 20 percent reduction in energy intensity during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), Yang said.

Despite some concerns over the credibility of the NBS figures, Yang said the revised data were more reliable than previous estimates.

Macro-economic data revisions are not unusual even in other countries. The US, for example, said recently that its third-quarter GDP rose 2.8 percent year-on-year compared with the previous estimate of 3.5 percent.

In the revised data for last year, the service sector accounted for 41.8 percent of China’s GDP, compared with the earlier estimate of 40.1 percent. It is still far less than the levels in Western countries, where it could be more than 70 percent.

“Even in Asia, the sector contributes an average of 45 percent to a country’s economy,” said Zhuang Jian, a senior economist with Asian Development Bank.

Source – China Daily

Online clothing retailer Vancl had topped Deloitte’s ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in Asia. Vancl announced its plans to expand into Hong Kong soon to extend the reach of its Web apparel business, which had demonstrated impressive growth over the last 3 years. The privately held firm founded in October 2007 runs the internet shopping portal Vancl.com, which directly markets and sells to mainland consumers its own brand of garments for men, women and children, in addition to shoes, accessories and home furnishings.

Jolyon Barker, the group managing partner at Deloitte’s technology, media and telecommunications practice, credited Vancl for an estimated 29,576 percent revenue growth rate over the past three years, enough to easily seize the #1 spot in the fast-500 list this year. Online market analyst firm iResearch estimated Vancl had a dominant 28.4 percent of the mainland’s business-to-consumer online garment retailing market in the first half.

Vancl, which has more than 800 workers, says it sells about 50,000 pieces of garments a day. William Chou, the lead executive at Deloitte China’s technology, media and telecommunications group, attributed Vancl’s rapid growth to the growing fondness of mainland consumers for shopping online, the firm’s focus on selling strictly apparel, its wide distribution and customer service. Other mainland online vendors offer a broad portfolio of products and often lack customer support. Vancl’s lifestyle-brand approach to selling a specific collection of attractive and low-cost merchandise on the internet also combined what appears to be retailing lessons learned from Britain’s Marks & Spencer, Amazon.com in the United States and CEO Chen’s own e-commerce experience on the mainland.

Chen was the founder and executive vice-president of Beijing-based online bookstore service Joyo.com, which was acquired in 2004 by Amazon for US$75 million and transformed into its regional website. “We’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg, with a customer base of two million to three million buyers out of 300 million internet users in China,” said Chen. “We expect further growth as we focus on innovation and improving customer experience.”

Vancl expects its annual revenue to rise about 100 per cent this year from 300 million yuan (HK$340.59 million) last year. Sales in its first year reached only 1.12 million yuan.

The mainland’s business-to-consumer online apparel shopping market is forecast to record revenue of 2.4 billion yuan this year and 18 billion yuan in 2012, according to iResearch. Barker said Vancl’s stellar performance in the past three years had clearly skewed the average revenue growth rate in the Deloitte fast-500 list’s top five, which collectively posted 8,980 per cent in average revenue growth over the past three years.

Source: HKCHCC

Mobile subscribers in India totaled 488.4 million at the end of October 2009, according to the latest monthly update by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The country added a record 16.67 million new wireless subscribers in the month of October, driven mainly by the newly introduced per second billing started by Tata. In September 2009, mobile operators signed up 15 million new users to reach 471.73 million subscribers. In 2009, India’s wireless subscriber base had increased at about 14 million new users a month.

For the third consecutive month in October, Tata Teleservices – 26 percent owned by Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, had the highest number of additions with 3.87 million new users (4 million the previous month), followed by Vodafone at 2.98 million (1.97 mil in September).

Bharti Airtel, India’s largest operator with about 23 percent market share in terms of subscriber base, added 2.7 million users in October as compared to 2.5 million in September 2009, while Aircel added 2.02 million subscribers.

Total broadband subscriber base increased by 2.49 per cent to 7.4 million in October 2009 from 7.22 million in the previous month.

Source: TRAI

China had 7 million 3G users by the end of September 2009, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and mobile phone users in China numbered 700 million.

China Mobile, the largest Chinese mobile operator with nearly 73 percent market share, added 5.1 million new users in October 2009 and its total subscriber base stood at 513,466,000. The number of G3 subscribers who used its 3G network services was 2,309,000. China Telecom added almost 3.1 million CDMA subs, taking its total to nearly 49.9 million. China Unicom added 801,000 new GSM subscribers to total nearly 143.6 million subscribers.

The Internet population in China had reached 360 million by end September 2009, according to statistics from the “2009 China Internet Conference” reported by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Internet access via cell phones hit 192 million users, surging 62.7 percent over the same period last year. China totaled 719.8 million wireless subscribers by end-September 2009 while the country’s telephones surpassed 1 billion, with 324 mil fixed-line users.

What’s interesting to note was that the number of mobile Internet users in China had increased by 37 million people from 3 months ago, suggesting Chinese receptivity to adopting new technology and its market opportunities as compared to more conventional mode of PC internet access in US and Europe.

Earlier this year, CNNIC’s 24th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China reported 338 mil China web surfers at end-June 2009, up 13.4% from late 2008 while the number of broadband users was 320 million, accounting for 94.3% of all Internet users. Then the number of mobile Internet users reached 155 million, accounting for 46% of all Internet users and up 32.1% within 6 months. Most Chinese used the Web for news, entertainment and social networking. Online shopping users jumped by 14 million during the period to 87.9 million while the use of online payment grew by only 4.8%.

Currently, there are 260 million people reading news online, 240 million people communicating through instant messengers, 76 million people paying for services online, 360 million see the Internet as an efficient way to buy or sell stock.

There are 3.2 million websites located in China, with international bandwidth reaching 730G. The Internet industry posted 150 billion yuan sales, with 80 percent of profits coming from online gaming, online advertising and e-commerce. E-commerce accounted for 10 percent of China’s overall retail sales in 2008. The country’s largest telecom operator, China Mobile, is launching a cell-phone payment system based on mobile Internet technology.

Staff of China Mobile said, “The service allows users to use their mobile phone to buy items and pay bills.. just like a bank card. All ordinary purchases can be done with your phone. You don’t have to take your wallet with you any more.”

Technology, not only the search for talent, is emerging as one of three megatrends that will change the character of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry according to StarTek CEO and President Larry Jones. Suggesting that “agents will be turbocharged on technology,” Jones envisions services delivery through multiple emerging technologies including social networking.

In recent years, BPO services providers have built service centers around the world, often in emerging nations, that provide a plentiful supply of educated but low-cost workers. While talent availability will remain an important concern for the industry, according to Jones, new communications technologies are likely to relieve some pressure on services providers to leverage far-flung, low-cost lasbor markets.

Jones made his forecast in remarks delivered at the International Outsourcing Summit: Global Market Leaders Addressing Global Issues (IOS) last month. Industry luminaries from the United States, China, Malaysia, Canada, India, Australia, Europe, Singapore, and South Africa attended the Summit, and many participated as speakers for the influential meeting held in the world’s second-largest offshore outsourcing center, after India.

Two other megatrends—the increasing popularity of “at home agents” and new vertical growth—are also likely to have significant impact on the nature of BPO services delivery, according to Jones. Virtual contact centers staffed by part-time agents working at home and connected by high-speed portals will lessen the need to recruit large numbers of agents in one locale. “They can be anywhere,” Jones said.

Jones said that the BPO industry has traditionally and primarily relied on demand from just three industries: telecom, finance, and retail. He predicted that pharmaceuticals, biotech, utilities, clean technology, organic food, and healthcare will emerge as new sources of revenue as the BPO industry expands, and demand for value-added services accelerates in the next five years. “These are global issues, and the BPO industry will find huge opportunity here,” he said.

Technology advances will find BPOs providing truly “friendly technology” for self-help, enabling clients to address their concerns quickly. When human interface is necessary, voice assistance is increasingly being supplemented by e-mail and chat. Social networking, Jones said, is a powerful, emerging tool for building customer care communities that incorporate client interface in addressing other client issues. Jones also believes that technology-driven analytics providing better insight to customers, markets, operations, and sales is becoming a sought-after service as companies seek to build strategic partnerships with their customers.

At home agents are already a “hot” strategy for services providers in developed markets, although connectivity issues in offshore locations such as India and the Philippines make reliance on at home agents less feasible. Still, Jones believes that recruiting and training at home agents can and will take place without applicants ever setting foot in their employers’ offices, aside from performing the work they are hired to do.

Vertical growth, Jones said, could dramatically increase the size of the addressable BPO market, estimated at between $150-250 billion by industry analysts.

Jones also said the Philippines can benefit from the technology-driven and vertical growth megatrends. “The Philippines is already considered the top offshore outsourcing location for customer care; however, for the country to catch up with other locations for higher value-added services, the Philippines must address challenges in the development of talent that have the technical skills to maximize the use of next-generation technology,” he said.

Source – StarTek

Asia is rebounding rapidly from the global crisis and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its growth forecast for the region, but it said Asia must adopt to a “new world” with weaker demand from its key Western export markets. Asia’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth was now projected to be 2.75% in 2009 and 5.75% in 2010, about 1.5 percentage points higher for both years than predicted in the IMF’s regional outlook in May, said an IMF report on the economic outlook of Asia-Pacific released on October 29, 2009.

However, as the recovery of the global economy was expected to be sluggish, Asia’s growth forecast for 2010 was well below the average of 6.7 per cent growth posted over the past decade, said the report.

“The primary driver of Asia’s recovery has been a return towards normalcy following the abrupt collapse in global trade and finance at the end of 2008,” the report said.

“Just as the United States downturn triggered an outsized fall in Asia’s GDP because international trade and finance froze, now their normalization is generating an outsized Asian upturn,” it added.

The other main driver of Asia’s rebound, the IMF said, had been the region’s rapid, forceful, and comprehensive policy response to the global downturn.

“The response – both on the monetary and on the fiscal side – has been substantially stronger than in past recessions and in some respects greater than in other regions,” according to the report.

One major challenge ahead for Asia’s policy makers was to maintain policy stimulus until the recovery became self-sustaining, the IMF said.

The second challenge for the region would be to return to sustained, rapid growth in a “new world” with softer demand from the G7 industrialized nations.

“With the external environment likely to remain weak for some time, Asia’s growth prospects may be determined by its ability to diversify drivers of growth to allow domestic sources to play a more dynamic role,” said the report.

For the next two years, the IMF said, China was expected to continue leading Asia with growth projected to be 8.5 per cent in 2009 and 9 per cent in 2010, while India’s growth was expected to reach 5.4 per cent this year and 6.5 per cent next year.

Asia’s newly industrialized economies – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – were all projected to contract in 2009, but expected to reach growth rates between 3.5 and 4.3 per cent, respectively, in 2010.

For Japan, the IMF report expected a GDP contraction of 5.4 per cent this year and a modest recovery with growth by 1.7 per cent for 2010.

Source – Earthtimes