It's massively inefficient, but it gets reflected in great production numbers. Still, size and growth are easy ways to sell Asia. Maybe, but that's not how the sales pitch runs. Sides appears to run a good fund, but his track record is less than three years old. Over three years, it was also close to the bottom of its category.
China provides perhaps the clearest example of why GDP can be a misleading macroeconomic data point.
The Economist Intelligence Unit says China can continue its current eye-popping growth rate, forecasting an expansion of 8.3 percent a year from 2005 to 2009. In the four years to the end of 1996, GDP growth in Thailand averaged 8.2 percent a year. Today, it could be that Asian investors are learning that GDP growth is a piece of history, and often a distorted one at that. Singapore recently reported that first-quarter GDP rose 9.1 percent, far faster than most economists had been predicting. The market fell sharply anyway.