ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
On September 14th, Asian Development Bank (ADB) published the report “Asian
Development Outlook 2001” clearly stating that Asia continues to be one of the
areas with the word fastest growth in 2001; however, the growth rate of this area
has dropped lightly compared with that of 2000 and it will rebound gradually in
2002.
According to this report, ADB predicts the average GDP growth of the developing
Asian countries will be 5.3% in 2001 compared to 7.1% in 2000, and they will
increase to 6.1% in 2002. The report indicates one of the reasons for the reduction
of the growth is the lower demand of the Asian countries and the slowdown of the
US economy, where export of the Asia account for 25%, and the unstable rebound
of Japanese economy.
Particularly in the electronic field, while Asia occupies 40% of global market
share, the US consumes about a half of the word production volume. Due to
the negative influence of the US economy, the export of the Asian region only
increased by 8.3% in 2001 compared to 20.5% in 2000.
The Southeast Asia economy will grow by 4% compared to 5.1% last year, with
Indonesia 4.2% in comparison with 4.8%, Malaysia 4.9 % compared with 8.5%,
The Philippines 3.1% compared 3.9% respectively... These countries used to be in
a serious crisis during the years 97/98 but they have rebounded for two years by
restructuring the businesses and financial sector. However, now privacy bad debt
ratio is quite large, so post-crisis recovery and growth process is strongly affected
by external factors.
The trade expansion and the information technology revolution will create a good
opportunity for Asian economic development, according to the ADB. In order to
deal with challenges from globalization, Asian economies should promote trade,
stimulate to increase domestic demand and to seek for new markets, develop
human resources, and solve social problems.