Hong Kong's overall domestic demand performance fell short of expectations, prompting Standard Chartered Bank to lower its forecast for the city's annual GDP growth.

According to the Zhongtong Finance APP, on November 7th, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) lowered its forecast for Hong Kong's GDP growth this year from 4.3% to 3.3%. Previously, the bank had raised its forecast for Hong Kong's GDP growth this year from 3.6% to 4.3%. Liu Jianheng, Senior Economist for Greater China at the bank, explained that this was mainly due to Hong Kong's GDP growth in the first three quarters only reaching 2.8%. Therefore, in order to achieve a 4.3% increase for the whole year, the fourth quarter would need to see growth of over 7%, which is a bit difficult. Therefore, the bank has lowered its forecast for Hong Kong's GDP growth this year, and as a result, its forecast for next year's GDP growth has also been lowered from the original estimate of 3.6% to 2.9%. Liu Jianheng stated that Hong Kong's economic growth in the third quarter was lower than expected, mainly reflected in investment, exports, and retail. Investment was weak, and exports, which were already expected to perform poorly, performed even worse in the third quarter. However, the biggest gap was in retail performance. Due to many Hong Kong residents choosing to consume in mainland China or overseas, coupled with the decline in property prices and the stock market in Hong Kong, it led to a negative wealth effect, resulting in overall domestic demand in Hong Kong performing worse than expected. However, Liu Jianheng pointed out that although Standard Chartered has lowered its forecast for Hong Kong's GDP growth for the next two years, Hong Kong's economy is still in the process of recovery and has not changed. In addition, according to a survey by the Productivity Promotion Bureau on the deployment and development direction of Hong Kong's small and medium-sized enterprises in 2024, 91% of small and medium-sized enterprises expect to encounter business difficulties in 2024. Among them, 53% believe that the economic environment next year will be worse than expected, 35% are concerned about rising costs, and another 32% are worried about difficulties in recruiting employees.