Economic Buzz: Southeast Asia Set To Grow By 5.1% In 2022 Says ADB

16 Mar 2022 , 02:55 PM

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic pushed 4.7 million people in Southeast Asia into extreme poverty in 2021, as 9.3 million jobs disappeared, compared with a baseline no-COVID scenario, according to a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report. The Omicron wave could cut the regions economic growth by as much as 0.8 percentage points in 2022, says the report, Southeast Asia Rising from the Pandemic. The regions economic output in 2022 is expected to remain more than 10% below the baseline no-COVID scenario. Following a 4% decline in output in 2020, growth in the region is now expected to increase by about 3% in 2021. This performance is much lower than ADBs earlier forecast of 4.4% in April 2021, because of tighter restrictions across the region to fight surging infections caused by the Delta variant. For 2022, growth is expected to pick up to 5.1% as 400 million or 59.0% of the population in the region become fully vaccinated, enabling many economies to reopen.

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