HONG KONG (New York Times) — The global economy may have stopped its dramatic free fall, but data from the Asia-Pacific region Wednesday underscored what economists have long been cautioning: that a return to actual growth is months off, and that once it does arrive, it will be feeble.

In Japan, orders for machinery slid 5.4 percent in April from a month earlier, much more than analysts had expected, official data showed Wednesday.
Orders for such factory equipment are a useful barometer of investment plans and of the economy as a whole, and the steep decline in April showed just how fragile and protracted a return to growth will be in Japan. With the economy mired in recession and demand for Japanese goods abroad likely to stay weak for months, Japanese companies remain reluctant to invest in equipment.
Similarly, data in Malaysia showed factory output down 11.4 percent in April from a year earlier. The drop was less pronounced than during previous months, but it was the eighth consecutive month of decline, showing how severely the drop-off in global trade had dented production.
Countries across the region have seen exports shrivel as the United States and Europe have battled recession.
April statistics published Wednesday in the Philippines illustrated the trend: Exports were 35.2 percent below a year earlier, and 3.6 percent below March. South Korea — where unemployment rose to a near four-year high of 3.9 percent in May — and Taiwan have both recently reported similarly disappointing export data for May.
By contrast, Australia appears further on the path to recovery as far-reaching stimulus measures take effect. Consumer confidence jumped in June by the most in 22 years after the economy unexpectedly avoided recession, according to a survey published Wednesday. Similarly, approvals for home loans rose for a seventh consecutive month, helped by government incentives and lower interest rates.
Trade, investment and retail statistics from China, due this week, are expected to show fresh evidence of how resilient that economy is — though growth there, too, will remain well below the red-hot levels seen before the global crisis.
“There have been further signs of economic green shoots around the globe over the last month,” said Sarah Arkle, chief investment officer at Threadneedle, in a note published Wednesday. “We should stress, however, that the situation is generally one of a less negative environment, rather than a positive one.”
Hopes for a recovery — even a mild one — have helped stock markets rally since March, interrupted only by muted corrections. Stocks in the Asia-Pacific region continued upward Wednesday, led by Hong Kong, which gained 4 percent. The Nikkei 225 index in Japan rose 2.1 percent, and stocks in Australia, whose commodities-dependent economy also benefits from a recent recovery in the price of oil and other raw materials, added 2.3 percent.
In its note, Threadneedle said it expected market progress to be “much slower in the months ahead, given the prospects of a slow economic recovery,” but added that it had “a strong preference for Asia and emerging markets,” where economies have generally weathered the downturn better than had been feared, and “have little of the debt baggage, at either the fiscal or consumer level, that haunts many western developed countries.”
Photo: Japanese workers assemble auto parts at a factory in Karita town, 2007. (AFP/File/Yoshikazu Tsuno)
Photo2: File photo shows a worker of Japan's auto giant Nissan Motor assembling parts at the company's Kyushu Plant at Karita town in Fukuoka prefecture. (AFP/File/Yoshikazu Tsuno)