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(b) Retained imports of capital goods
Table 2
4.
Subject to certain statistical limitations,
retained imports of capital goods provide another
useful indicator of the latest trend in investment in
plant and machinery.
These retained imports increased
by about 3% in the first quarter of 1990, having
decreased by 9% in the third quarter and 20% in the
fourth quarter of last year (Table 2). However, the
increase in the first quarter was mainly due to the
import of two aircrafts. Excluding this item, there
was a decline of about 11%. This suggests that the
underlying investment demand was still weak.
Table 3
5.
In the first quarter of 1990, due to the
import of two aircrafts, transport equipment become
the largest category amongst all retained imports of
capital goods (accounting for 21% of the total value),
followed by industrial machinery (19%), and electronic
components and parts for computers (7%). A breakdown
of retained imports of capital goods by major
categories, along with their respective growth rates
in money terms, is given in Table 3. Because of the
difficulties in compiling reliable price indices as
the product breakdown becomes more disaggregated,
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