Asia’s developing economies will contract this year for the first time in six decades as the Covid-19 pandemic takes a toll on a crucial driver of global growth, according to the Asian Development Bank.
The ADB said in a new report that developing economies across Asia would on average show negative GDP growth of 0.7 per cent this year. “This will be the first regional contraction since the early 1960s,” Yasuyuki Sawada, the bank’s chief economist said ahead of the report’s launch. Mr Sawada said that the fall would be the sharpest since 1961, when regional growth contracted by 8 per cent.
The Manila-based development bank forecast that the economies would rebound in 2021, growing on average by 6.8 per cent. But it noted that this would still be below its pre-Covid-19 projections — implying a partial rather than a full recovery.