Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-495rp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-18T18:11:59.746Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia: Living with COVID-19

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2023

Daljit Singh
Affiliation:
ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute
Thi Ha Hoang
Affiliation:
ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute
Get access

Summary

The hope that the COVID-19 pandemic would be contained in 2021 did not materialize as the coronavirus continued to ravage the economies around the world, including Southeast Asia. Although there were important lessons learned from 2020, the pandemic was far from over in 2021 for most Southeast Asian economies. Uncertainty continued to prevail as the region once again struggled with managing the pandemic and juggling between health and economic needs. Living with COVID, rather than a “zero COVID” strategy, soon emerged as the new norm for some of the economies in Southeast Asia,

This chapter assesses the key factors affecting economic growth and recovery in 2021 as well as the prospects for sustaining the recovery in 2022. There are four main sections in this chapter. The second year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Southeast Asia is reviewed in the first section. The second section examines the impact of COVID-19 on regional growth in 2021 and 2022. The third section discusses the main factors that can affect the prospects of achieving or deterring the achievement of the forecasted growth. The conclusion is given in the last section.

Continued COVID-19 Disruptions

Containing the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Race to Vaccinate in Southeast Asia

One year of hard-earned lessons from managing the pandemic and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines at the start of 2021 provided hope for global recovery. But the subsequent emergence and rapid transmission of the Delta variant, which became the dominant form of COVID-19, soon disrupted the fragile global recovery. Once again, countries all over the world continued to wage battle against the coronavirus through vaccinations as well as a transition towards managing COVID-19 as an endemic disease.

In Southeast Asia, the number of COVID-19 cases started to surge upwards in the first quarter of 2021 (Figure 1). Daily COVID-19 cases per million shot up towards the second half of the year. This was due in part to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant and the slow rates of vaccination as well as the easing of restrictions in the early part of the year. The number of new cases per million peaked in the third quarter for some economies, but the average daily caseload in Southeast Asia started to decline towards the end of October 2021.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
First published in: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×