Business & Economy

Asia to post strong economic growth despite Ukraine war: ADB

Manila, Apr 6 (EFE).- Developing countries in Asia will record strong economic growth in 2022 despite the war in Ukraine and other uncertainties, including post-pandemic recovery, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Wednesday.

In the Asian Development Outlook for the year, the Manila-based institution estimated that the gross domestic product for developing Asian economies will grow at 5.2 percent in 2022 and 5.3 percent in 2023.

The developing Asian economies had expanded 6.9 percent in 2021.

“Fortunately, Covid-19’s Omicron variant has had a milder impact than other variants and progress on vaccination has allowed economies across developing Asia to remain more open than in previous Covid-19 waves,” the ADB report said.

However, growth is expected to be uneven between the regions.

While South Asia is expected to grow strongly at 7 percent, Southeast Asia and East Asia will post moderate growths at 4.9 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively.

The Caucasus and Central Asia will register a slowdown (3.6 percent) due to “close trade and financial linkages” with Russia, said the bank.

India is forecast to grow by 7.5 percent, while China and Indonesia will expand by five percent.

Despite the economic recovery from the pandemic, the agency warned about an increase in uncertainty due to the economic fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has upended the global economic outlook and greatly amplified uncertainty for a world economy still contending with Covid-19,” the bank said.

“The war’s outbreak in late February severely disrupted global economic conditions. Shockwaves have been felt in financial and commodity markets, and energy and food prices have spiked sharply and threaten to remain elevated or rise further.”

The ADB also pointed out that “aggressive monetary policy tightening in the United States may lead to financial instability,” while the emergence of a more deadly variant of Covid-19 could change the current scenario.

The ADB was founded in 1966 to make Asia-Pacific a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable region and eradicate extreme poverty, which went from 82 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 2015. EFE

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