IF - Economic Contractions Overshadow ASEAN-6 Recovery

• Among Southeast Asia's major economies - ASEAN-6 - Indonesia and the Philippines have currently almost 360,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases each. According to WHO's models, the real number could be 3.5 million or more.
• If the modeled estimates are some 10 times higher than the confirmed cases, the longer-term human costs and economic damage could prove significantly more burdensome than currently anticipated.
• Among the ASEAN-6 economies, only Vietnam is expected to avoid a contraction in 2020, in part thanks to US trade and technology war against China. Improved GDP growth has been fueled by recovery in exports, which has benefited from offshored manufacturing capacity from China. Yet, foreign investment flows have fallen.

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