What do high-frequency indicators tell us about economic activity in South Asia?
Earth Night At South and Central Asia From Space. Jayjune69/Shutterstock.com
Last year, South Asia imposed some of the world s strictest lockdowns to combat the spread of COVID-19. As a result, the region s economy shrank by 5.4 percent in 2020, its largest-ever decline.
As noted in our recent South Asia Economic Focus, recovery is underway but uneven as some countries, especially those dependent on tourism, are still reeling from the pandemic impacts. The report uses a number of high-frequency indicators including electricity consumption, nighttime lights intensity and nitrogen dioxide emissions (at the urban level) to understand the nature of the recovery. The blog discusses the two main indicators used to understand changes to GDP.
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Digital Technologies Can Help Maldives Build Back Better From COVID-19 Shock
MALE’, MALDIVES, April 15, 2021- Maldives can leverage digital technologies to build back better for a more green, resilient, and inclusive development following the COVID-19 pandemic, says the latest World Bank Maldives Development Update: A Digital Dawn released today.
The Maldives Development Update (MDU) notes that the country, post a massive pandemic led downturn, is firmly on the road to recovery. Thanks to successful marketing campaigns and relatively straightforward entry requirements, Maldives received more than 300,000 tourists in the first quarter of 2021. Assuming that a million tourists visit the country this year, the World Bank forecasts real GDP to grow by 17.1 percent in 2021. There are both downside and upside risks to the forecast.
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Having been formed in 2015 to transform Pakistan s economy by modernising its road, rail, air, and energy transportation systems and to connect the deep-sea Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Karachi to China s Xinjiang province and beyond by overland routes, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has achieved very little and instead has left Pakistan in precarious situation economically.
Recent reports including the World Bank and Institute for Policy Reforms have painted a grim picture of a struggling economy with very little to show in terms of infrastructure with the Lahore-based think tank institute maintaining Pakistan could be slipping into a debt trap, raising national security concerns.
Digital Technologies Can Help Maldives Build Back Better From the COVID-19 Shock - Maldives reliefweb.int - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reliefweb.int Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The IMF had predicted the world economy to expand 6 per cent in 2021, up from the 5.5 per cent it had forecast in January. It would be the fastest expansion for the global economy in IMF records dating back to 1980. In 2022, the IMF predicts, international economic growth will decelerate to a still strong 4.4%, up from its January forecast of 4.2 per cent. A way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly visible, IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath told reporters.
The agency s economists have estimated that the global economy shrank 3.3 per cent in 2020 after the devastating recession that followed the coronavirus eruption across the world early last spring. That is the worst annual figure in the IMF s database, though not as severe as the 3.5 per cent drop it had estimated three months ago.