No quick fix for Pakistan, Korea slowdown to persist

Pakistan this week secured a US$6bn loan from Saudi Arabia and has plans to court Chinese money. These deals may help paper over the cracks, but they won’t solve the economy’s balance of payments problems. For that, an IMF package with economic reform conditions attached is still probably the only solution. Meanwhile, South Korea’s weak GDP figures rang some alarm bells: the country is often seen as a bellwether for shifts in global demand. We saw nothing in the data to cause too much concern but should get a fuller picture of how the external environment is holding up next week, with the release of GDP data for Taiwan, the region’s manufacturing PMIs and an advanced estimate of Korean export growth for October.