After increasing frustration with dumbing down, I joined that 3 per cent who can live without TV. Can the nation ever be persuaded to do the same with Auntie?Christopher.walker tiscali.co.uk. Where is the growth going to come from next year? It will not, I fear, come from the UK. It is reasonable to expect some sort of pick-up in the second half of this year, but the latest figures out on Friday show that growth during the first half has been only 0.4 per cent, or less than 1 per cent at an annual rate.
That is despite a continued rise in borrowing which is even alarming the banks. Yes, a better second half should ease us into a better 2004, but the Treasury's Budget forecast for 3-3.5 per cent next year now looks optimistic. (Its forecast for growth of 2-2.5 per cent this year looks hopeless.) Where is the growth going to come from next year? It will not, I fear, come from the UK. Germany now expects no growth this year at all, and both France and Italy are likely to grow by less than 1 per cent.Next year? Well, I have taken some of the predictions from JP Morgan and shown them in the left-hand graph above. Forecasts are only forecasts, and I think these ones may turn out to be a bit over-optimistic overall. But I think they will be right as to the balance of growth - where it is likely to happen and where it is not.As you can see, two of the three big eurozone economies, Germany and Italy, are expected to grow by less than 2 per cent, with only France reaching that level.So the main engine of the world economy will continue to be the US? That is the hope and, as you can see, JP Morgan is looking for 3.3 per cent. But that requires American consumers to carry on doing the same as their British counterparts.
In the absence of much growth in real incomes, they will have to borrow more to finance their standard of living. I'm not sure this is really credible.No, if you want growth you look to three main regions: Asia, Latin America and eastern Europe. A word about each.The message of the graph is quite striking. The world's two largest countries by population also have the fastest growth rates. China is expected to grow by 7.5 per cent, India by 6.2 per cent This is astounding. Some 2.3 billion people, more than one third of the world's population, are experiencing growth that is two or three times that of the rich developed West. Not shown are other East Asian nations: Korea is expecting 6.7 per cent growth, Malaysia and Thailand 5 per cent each.