World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14469

The World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update is the World Bank's comprehensive, twice-yearly review of the region's economies prepared by the East Asia and Pacific regional unit of the World Bank.

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World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, October 2022: Reforms for Recovery

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-10) World Bank

Growth in most countries in the East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) region rebounded in the first half of 2022, but China lost momentum. In much of the region, domestic demand revived after the distress of the COVID-19 Delta wave. In China, the public health measures to contain outbreaks of the highly infectious Omicron variant inhibited consumption. Most of the region is projected to grow faster and have lower inflation in 2022 than other regions. Beyond the end of 2022, three factors could be a drag on growth: global deceleration, rising debt, and policy distortions. Current measures to contain inflation and debt are adding to existing distortions in the markets for food, fuel and finance in ways that could hurt growth. In each case, more efficient measures could address current difficulties without undermining longer-term objectives.
World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update - Spring 2022

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-04-04) World Bank

Amidst a fragile recovery, three clouds are gathering over the economic horizon: US inflation could provoke financial tightening, China’s structural slowdown and zero-COVID-19 policy could dampen regional exports, and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could disrupt food and fuel supplies, spook financial markets, and undermine business confidence. Counterposed against these risks, are three opportunities. First, shifts in the patterns of comparative advantage are creating new niches in both goods and services trade. Second, the diffusion of technologies could boost productivity. Finally, new green technologies could allow countries to cut carbon emissions without unacceptable cuts in consumption or growth. Accordingly, policy action must help countries to both affect the risk and grasp the opportunities. We begin by addressing three proximate questions: What is happening to the economies? Why? And what can we expect? We then discuss the policy options that can help East Asia and Pacific economies weather the shocks and ensure sustainable growth.
World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, October 2021: Long COVID

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-09-27) World Bank

The East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region is suffering a reversal of fortune. In 2020, many EAP countries successfully contained COVID-19 and economic activity swiftly revived as other regions struggled with the pandemic and economic recession. Now the region is being hit hard by the COVID-19 Delta variant while many advanced economies are on the path to economic recovery. The disease is damaging the economy and is unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future. In the near term, the persistence of the pandemic will prolong human and economic distress unless individuals and firms can adapt. In the longer term, COVID-19 will reduce growth and increase inequality unless the scars are remedied and the opportunities grasped. Policy action must help economic agents to adjust today and make choices that avert deceleration and disparity tomorrow.
World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, April 2021: Uneven Recovery

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-03-25) World Bank

A year after the first case was confirmed in Wuhan COVID-19 is proving hard to suppress even, while the emergence of more transmissible variants of the variant poses new challenges to the containment of the disease globally. The economies of the region began to bounce back in the second half of 2020. However, only China and Vietnam have followed a V-shape recovery path with output surpassing pre-COVID-19 levels. Most of the other countries have not seen a full-fledged recovery in terms of either output or growth momentum. Economic performance across countries continues to depend on (i) the efficiency with which the virus is contained; (ii) the ability to take advantage of the revival in international goods trade; and (iii) the capacity of governments to provide fiscal and monetary support. China and Vietnam are expected to enjoy strong growth in 2021, whereas other economies in the region will grow more gradually. Many economies, especially in the Pacific islands are not expected to reach pre-COVID-19 levels of output until 2022 or later. Governments in the region need to work cooperatively to address three key issues: (i) a regional and global distribution of vaccines that minimizes the risk of a continued spread of COVID-19 and its variants; (ii) continue to provide economic support to their economies while carefully evaluating the trade-offs between the need for further stimulus and debt sustainability; and (iii) enact policies and prioritize investments that protect against climate risk to ensure sustainable economic growth.
World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, October 2020: From Containment to Recovery

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-09-28) World Bank

COVID-19 has delivered a triple shock to the developing East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region: the pandemic itself, the economic impact of containment measures, and reverberations from the global recession. Without action on multiple fronts, the pandemic could reduce regional growth over the next decade by 1 percentage point per year, with the greatest impacts being felt by poor households, because of lower levels of access to healthcare, education, jobs, and finance. Why were many economies in the region able to contain the disease while some others still struggle? How have these shocks affected economic activity and poverty in different countries? What are the prospects for recovery and how will longer term growth be affected across the region? Is there a tension between containing the disease and providing relief today and promoting recovery and growth tomorrow? These key questions are addressed in the World Bank’s October 2020 EAP Economic Update.
World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, April 2020: East Asia and Pacific in the Time of COVID-19

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-03-30) World Bank

The COVID-19 virus that triggered a supply shock in China has now caused a global shock. Developing economies in East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), recovering from a trade war and struggling with a viral disease, now face the prospect of a global financial shock and recession. Significant economic pain seems unavoidable in all countries and the risk of financial instability is high, especially in countries with excessive private indebtedness. Several economies are expected to contract in 2020, which will lead to an increase in the poverty rate. Households linked to affected sectors will suffer more. To deal with this crisis, countries need to act fast and decisively to contain the spread of infection, while expanding capacity both to treat people and to test and trace infections. Fiscal measures should provide social protection to cushion against shocks, especially for the most economically vulnerable. Firms will need liquidity injections to help them stay in business and maintain beneficial links to Global Value Chains. The optimal economic policy response will change over time and depend on the precise nature and evolution of the shock. Given the unprecedented nature of the economic shock to each country, and the fact that it is also affecting all other countries in the region and beyond, an exceptional policy response is needed.
World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, October 2019: Weathering Growing Risks

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-10-09) World Bank

Growth in the developing East Asia and Pacific region slowed in the first half of 2019 given weakening global demand and heightened policy uncertainty amid ongoing trade tensions. Steady consumption growth helped to partly offset the effects of weakening exports and investment on growth. The region’s growth prospects face intensified downside risks, including further escalation of trade disputes, a sharper-than-expected slowdown in China, the United States and the Euro Area, along with a disorderly Brexit, and an abrupt change in global financing conditions. In some countries, rising indebtedness and other vulnerabilities, such as the constrained capacity for foreign debt rollover, could amplify the negative effects of external shocks. The regional growth moderation underscores the need to address key vulnerabilities and preserve economic dynamism among developing East Asia and Pacific economies. In the short run, countries with sufficient policy space should use available policy tools to stimulate domestic activities. Better quality spending, together with prudent debt management, is needed to safeguard fiscal sustainability. Deepening regional integration would help offset the negative impact of global protectionism. In the medium to long term, pursuing structural reforms that raise competitiveness, support trade and investment, and encourage innovation is critical to boosting productivity and growth.
World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update 2010, Volume 1 : Emerging Stronger from the Crisis

(World Bank, 2010) World Bank

East Asia has recovered from the economic and financial crisis. Largely thanks to China, the region's output, exports and employment have mostly returned to the levels before the crisis. Leading the global economy, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in developing East Asia is poised to rise to 8.7 percent in 2010 after slowing from 8.5 percent in 2008 to 7.0 percent in 2009. This report also identifies two common regional agenda items for the medium term. First, the process of regional integration, driven by Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) commitments to creating a single economic area, will need to continue. Deeper regional economic integration is now even more important, given prospects for slower growth in advanced economies. Behind-the-border trade barriers must be lowered, even in the face of incipient protectionist pressures around the world, including in the region. Deeper integration will encourage agglomeration economies and intra-industry trade, support sustainable urbanization, lower costs, and increase international competitiveness. Second, addressing climate change is high priority in the region. Mitigation measures must be strengthened to improve land and water use, bolster energy efficiency and conservation, and foster a much larger role for renewable sources of energy. Moreover, with investment rates in the region higher than in developed countries, there is scope for East Asia to move rapidly to the "green" technology frontier. Such a move will give the region a competitive advantage in a sector poised for rapid global growth. At the same time, the adaptation agenda will require enhancing the region's cooperation and disaster risk management frameworks. Institutional and regulatory frameworks for improving the resiliency of economic activity, reducing drought and flood risk, and managing coastal areas and small islands, are critically needed.
East Asia and Pacific Update, December 2008: East Asia - Navigating the Perfect Storm

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-12) World Bank

As the global economy finds itself in the worst financial crisis since the great depression, the East Asia and Pacific region has not been spared the full fury of the economic storm. The surge and subsequent drop in food and fuel prices was followed by the intensification in the financial crisis that began in mid- 2007 in the U.S., deepened through the first half of 2008, and took a sharp turn for the worse after September 15. Even as East Asian policymakers were battling the previous crisis in late 2007 and early 2008 - the rise in inflation following the steep increases in food and fuel prices they were confronted by sudden falls in equity prices and exchange rates, sharp increases in short-term interest rates, and an abrupt deceleration in export growth. The epicenter of the storm was in the developed countries, but its reach spread quickly across the globe. The failure of important financial institutions in the major financial systems froze interbank and credit markets around the world and revised the price of risk upward, triggering a global liquidity shortage. The ensuing search for liquidity worldwide prompted, among other things, the sale of equity and debt securities and the withdrawal of capital from emerging markets, destabilizing banking systems far from the center of the crisis. Boosts to liquidity and injections of capital in financial institutions by developed country authorities may avert a systemic meltdown of financial markets, but heightened risk aversion and an ongoing deleveraging across the world is causing capital to retreat from developing countries and the cost of financing to rise. The loss of trust, breakdown in financial markets, and curtailment of bank loans have hit investment, production, and trade, causing global growth to slow rapidly. Japan and Europe are already in recession, and the US is expected to follow soon. All three are expected to contract further in 2009, dampening import demand and resulting in the first decline in world trade volumes in a quarter century.
East Asia and Pacific Update, April 2008: East Asia - Testing Times Ahead

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-04) World Bank

Last year Developing East Asia recorded its highest growth rate in over a decade (10.2 percent), capping a decade of improvements following its home-grown financial crisis in 1998. Yet this is hardly a time for celebration, but rather one for concern. The global economy is once again facing a testing time, with soaring fuel and food prices, on the one hand, and, on the other, an unfolding sub-prime crisis emanating in the United States and spreading to other countries and asset classes, bringing in its wake a plunging dollar and a slowdown in global trade and growth. Despite falling growth in exports to the US, rising volatility in global financial markets, high and volatile international commodity prices, and an increasingly clouded outlook for the world economy, economic activity in most East Asian economies continued at strong rates through the end of 2007 and into early 2008. Fortunately, the countries of East Asia are generally better prepared than ever to deal with the vicissitudes of the global economy in this more uncertain time. Reflecting lessons learned from the East Asian financial crisis of a decade ago, today most economies in the region have strong external payments positions and large international reserves, prudent fiscal and monetary policies, better regulated banking systems, and profitable and competitive corporations. East Asia's trade and financial relations with the rest of the world have become steadily more diverse. The region is becoming more of a growth pole in the world economy, proving to be a force for stability at a time when the industrial economies are slowing.