Thailand
Southeast Asia economies will lag Latin America’s in growth this year: Moody’s
Latin America looks likely to take the lead over Southeast Asia in terms of economic growth this year, according to Moody’s Analytics.
Economist Jesse Rogers, who covers Latin America and Asian emerging markets. He says Latin American economies have been boosted by the open-at-all-costs approach to the Coronavirus pandemic.
“Though Delta’s rampage has occasioned only small changes to our forecast for emerging markets as a whole, there are large shifts in the distribution of growth across regions,” Rogers said.
“Topping the list is a substantial downward adjustment to the outlook for Southeast Asia, which stands in stark contrast to our view of improved prospects in Latin America. While the emerging economies of Southeast Asia have outperformed their counterparts in Latin America for most of the past two decades, their lead will slide in the next few quarters as Southeast Asian governments clamp down to fight the pandemic’s lingering second and third waves,” he said.
Consumer spending, retail sales, industrial production and economic activity in Latin America’s largest economies performed better than Moody’s forecast in recent months.
“The push to reopen at all costs, on display most prominently in Brazil and Mexico but also in play in Chile, Colombia and Peru, underpins upgrades to the forecast in each of the past three forecast cycles. Improved prospects for Brazil, the third-largest emerging economy after China and India, have nudged the outlook for emerging markets as a whole slightly higher,” Rogers said.
Brazil has the fourth largest rate of Coronavirus infections in the world at 20.6 million. Indonesia is two places behind it with nearly 4 million cases. Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines have also been hard hit.
“The late start of Covid-19 vaccination campaigns in Southeast Asia—in most of the region, less than one-fifth of the population has received vaccine first doses—means that pandemic waves will reverberate for some time. Mobility and social distancing restrictions—albeit on a stop-and-go basis—will extend well through fall; assuming they remain nearly as strict, they will prevent the region from retaking its traditional lead over Latin America and other emerging regions in the remainder of this year,” Rogers said
Cambodia’s economy may not be hit as hard as many of its ASEAN counterparts. Average daily infections are 18 percent off the peak, according to the Reuters Coronavirus tracker. More than 17.3 million shots of Covid vaccine have been administered, enough to double-dose 52.5 percent of the population. While the Kingdom’s major cities have been under curfew this month, the government has ordered restrictions to be lifted and is even considering opening the doors to international tourists by the end of the year.
The government is forecasting 2.5 percent growth this year and 4.8 percent in 2022.
Source: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50924130/southeast-asia-economies-will-lag-latin-americas-in-growth-this-year-moodys/