Aging Japan, China Drive Jobs to Southeast Asia - Businessweek

Jose Winylito Tanquis has reason to be proud as he raises a flag to signal the launch of the 58,000- ton “Ocean Symphony” in the Philippines. Not only did he help build the cargo vessel, his son John now works at the yard.

“Now, he can buy his own stuff, like shoes and clothes,” said Tanquis, 47, a foreman at Tsuneishi Holdings Inc.’s yard in Balamban on Cebu Island. At 21, John is the eldest of six siblings who will enter the workforce in the next decade.

The so-called demographic dividend from a rising supply of young workers is one reason Japan’s second-largest shipbuilder expanded in the Philippines, where workers are on average half the age of its Japanese employees. Tsuneishi is considering Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar for another shipyard, said Hitoshi Kono, chief of the company’s local operation.

Asia’s manufacturing powerhouses -- Japan, South Korea and China -- are among the fastest-aging countries in the world, while developing nations in Southeast Asia are among the youngest in the region. As factories, jobs and investment flow south to tap cheaper labor, growth in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations is poised to accelerate, propelling the area’s currencies and fueling consumer and property booms, Bank of America Corp. says.

“The demographic dividend is over for Japan and Korea, and it will be over for China soon,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief economist at Itochu Corp., Japan’s third-largest trading company. “It’s happening now in the Asean area, and it will continue for some time.”

Parrotfish Fillet

For Cebu, famous for its luxury beach resorts, that means regional authorities are building another four 10,000 square- meter (108,000 square-foot) factories this year. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. (KKD) (KKD) unveiled its first outlets on the island in October, while 7-Eleven Inc. chose July 11 to open its first two Cebu convenience stores.

Two hours’ drive from the Shangri-La Mactan Resort & Spa -- where tourists enjoy parrotfish fillet and black-pepper squid overlooking the ocean -- Tsuneishi has launched 11 ships this year, supporting more than 15,000 workers. The company has two shipyards in Japan and one in China.

Mitsumi Electric Co. (6767), with more than 14,000 staff on Cebu, is among businesses looking to move more manufacturing out of China, said Yoshitsugu Murakami, a spokesman in Tokyo for the electronic-parts maker.

“Labor costs in China have been rising,” Murakami said. “It’s good for us to shift production to the Philippines little by little. It’s easy to recruit talented workers.”

‘Standout’ Winner

The Philippines is a “standout” among countries set to benefit from a bigger labor pool, with its rate of economic expansion likely to rise as much as 1.5 percentage points during the next decade, according to Chua Hak Bin, an economist in Singapore at Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch division.

The International Monetary Fund predicts China’s growth will slow to 8.5 percent by 2017 from 9.2 percent last year, while the Philippines will expand 5 percent compared with 3.7 percent, and growth in Vietnam will reach 7.5 percent from 5.9 percent, according to projections published in April.

“Domestic demand will more likely grow at faster rates if the labor force is going to grow more quickly, and that will spur the exchange rates as well,” said Chua, who previously led the Singapore central bank’s external economies division.

Standard & Poor’s this month raised the Philippines’s credit rating to one level below investment grade, its highest since 2003. In January, Moody’s Investors Service elevated Indonesia to investment grade for the first time since 1997.

Education Support

The demographic dividend -- a term popularized by economists David E. Bloom, David Canning and Jaypee Sevilla in a 2001 National Bureau of Economic Research study -- happens when most of a country’s population is in the 15-to-64 working-age range. This increases productivity if supported by policies that promote health, family, labor and financial and human capital, the study concluded.

The Philippine labor force will expand by almost 18 million, or 31 percent, to 75 million by 2020 compared with 2010, Merrill Lynch projected in an April 27 note. Malaysia will grow by 19 percent, to 22 million. Indonesia will see a gain of more than 18 million, to 180 million.

China’s workforce will peak at around 970 million in 2020 as the population’s median age rises by more than three years, to 37.8, Merrill Lynch forecasts. Japan’s median age will increase to 48.5 and South Korea’s to 43.4, compared with 23.9 in the Philippines and 28.4 in Malaysia.

Skills Handicap

India has the biggest potential dividend of all, with a projected labor-force expansion of 95 million by 2020, Merrill Lynch estimates. Even so, businesses from Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (LT), the nation’s biggest engineering company, to Leighton Holdings Ltd. (LEI), Australia’s largest builder, say a lack of skills means there aren’t enough trained workers to build the roads, railways and ports India needs.

The South Asian country’s expansion skidded to a nine-year low in the first quarter, and the rupee tumbled to a record low against the dollar in June, as investors lost confidence in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ability to revive the economy.

“An increasing labor force is definitely a plus point,” Sri Mulyani Indrawati, a World Bank managing director and former Indonesian finance minister, said in a May 24 interview in Tokyo. “But it’s not necessarily going to become an economic gain if they’re not trained and skilled.”

Adult literacy is above 92 percent in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, while in India it is 63 percent, according to the United Nations 2011 Human Development report.

Investment Impediments

Other impediments to realizing the potential from demographic shifts include lawlessness and delays in implementing governments’ ambitions for infrastructure.

The Philippines ranked 130th of 142 countries in the World Economic Forum’s latest survey on the cost to business of terrorism, and 112th in terms of crime and violence -- the worst in Southeast Asia. Fifty-four percent of mining companies said issues such as attacks by terrorists, criminals and guerrilla groups are a strong deterrent for investors, a Fraser Institute poll released in February showed.

The nation also has lagged behind on government construction projects, with its fiscal deficit last year below projections mainly because public capital spending had fallen, the IMF said in March.

Rich Neighbors

One advantage for Southeast Asia, astride one of the busiest maritime arteries, is proximity to Japan and China, the world’s largest net creditor nations.

“Investments in Asean will continue for the next decade,” said Jan Oosterveld, former head of Royal Philips Electronics NV (PHIA)’s Asia Pacific operations and now a senior lecturer at the University of Navarra’s IESE Business School in Barcelona. “Simple manufacturing will go to the cheapest countries: It’s going now from China to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Bangladesh. More advanced industries will go to Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines.”

Japan’s foreign direct investment to Asean more than doubled in 2011 to $19.6 billion from the year before, surpassing the $14.2 billion to China and Hong Kong, according to the Japan External Trade Organization.

“Asean labor costs are becoming relatively cheaper because China’s wages are rising,” said Satoshi Osanai, a Daiwa Institute of Research economist in Tokyo. Migrant workers’ average pay rose 21 percent in China to 2,049 yuan ($322) a month in 2011, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.

Wage Gap

The Philippines lured $6 billion last year in pledged foreign investment, led by Japan, where the average wage for a nonagricultural worker is more than 26 times higher, government and International Labor Organization data show.

Credit Suisse Group AG in March boosted its estimated trend-growth rate for the Southeast Asian country to about 5 percent, from 4.5 percent to 4.75 percent previously, citing President Benigno Aquino’s $16 billion infrastructure program and improved transparency. Aquino, 52, said in a May interview his nation’s dream to lure manufacturing “is happening now.”

Electronics accounted for about half the Philippines’s $48 billion exports last year and more than 10 percent of the economy. Investment in the nation’s economic zones, which primarily comes from abroad, almost doubled to 16 billion pesos ($384 million), according to the Trade Department.

Young Spenders

Rising economic growth enriches young spenders, a boon to companies such as Nestle SA (NESN), the world’s biggest food maker, and Unilever NV (UNA), provider of products from Dove soap to Knorr soup, according to Amlan Roy, head of global demographics and pensions research at Credit Suisse in London. He also favors Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) (PG), the world’s largest consumer-products company, and insurers including Samsung Life Insurance Co. (032830)

In the Antipodean Cafe in Kuala Lumpur’s ritzy Bangsar neighborhood, diners in their 20s relax on a Sunday morning over all-day breakfasts and 9 ringgit ($2.80) lattes. New Zealand owner Alun Evans, 43, says he opened his first outlet in Jakarta five years ago to serve expats. Now the six branches he has in the Indonesian and Malaysian capitals serve mostly locals, and he’s looking at adding venues in Singapore and Manila.

Investment has transformed the village of Balamban, which got its first shopping mall last year, quadrupling its population since the 1980s to about 80,000.

First Jobs

“There were practically no jobs before, none; nothing was happening until Tsuneishi came,” said Renold Macasi, 34, a general foreman at the shipyard. Tanquis, whose next two eldest children are in college, said he hopes all his sons and daughters will get their first jobs there.

The Balamban works built its first vessel in 1997, and the company forecasts the yard will have 35 billion pesos in sales in 2012, more than double five years ago.

In many ways, the town mirrors the port in Japan after which the company is named, where its original yard began building wooden boats in 1917.

“Tsuneishi was a very small town just like Balamban,” said Kono, 52, who was born in a house overlooking the docks. “Balamban now, too, is a shipyard town; everybody gets their happiness from the ships.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Karl Lester M. Yap in Manila at kyap5@bloomberg.net; Keiko Ujikane in Tokyo at kujikane@bloomberg.net; Shamim Adam in Singapore at sadam2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net; Paul Panckhurst at ppanckhurst@bloomberg.net