ASEAN+3 GDP to grow 4.9% in 2022: report

SINGAPORE: The regional gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 10 ASEAN member states plus China, Japan and South Korea will be 4.9 per cent for 2022, a recent report showed.

The ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) published its quarterly update of the ASEAN+3 regional economic outlook on Tuesday, and forecast the region’s inflation to remain relatively low at 2.9 per cent for 2022.

Founded in 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Economic growth in the ASEAN+3 region is estimated to come in at 5.9 per cent in 2021, while the region’s consumer price inflation in 2021 is now projected at 2.2 per cent, according to the quarterly update.

AMRO said it expects the ASEAN+3 region to remain resilient in 2022 despite new challenges from the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economy.

It said that the emergence of the Omicron variant towards the end of 2021 brought new uncertainties and set back the progress of economic re-opening. Nevertheless, high vaccination coverage has mitigated the risk of nationwide lockdowns, as experienced during the early days of the pandemic.

“The ASEAN+3 region has sufficient policy space to navigate through these new challenges, and stay on its recovery path,” AMRO chief economist Hoe Ee Khor said.

“A resurgence of infections continues to be the key downside risk, amplified by lingering global supply chain disruptions and rising global price pressures,” Khor said, adding that while the rise in global inflation is likely to prompt major advanced economies to roll back extraordinary monetary support earlier or more sharply than anticipated, the spillover effects for the region is likely to be limited because of greater resilience.