Economies in the region will possibly take years to fully recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. FMTNews Poverty SoutheastAsian Covid19
Southeast Asia’s top five economies, including Malaysia, have each spent billions of dollars in income support to cushion the pandemic’s blow.
The extended effects of the nation’s lockdown have been devastating to people like Manila resident Jenn Pinon, 35, who spent years working on a fine arts degree she hoped would make her financially secure. The region is likely to come in second behind the Indian subcontinent in charting the number of new poor in Asia this year, said Ramesh Subramaniam, Southeast Asia’s director-general at the Asian Development Bank in Manila.
Now, disappearing incomes are stalling growth, as consumption represents about 60% of the gross domestic product of the region’s major economies other than Singapore, says the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. The magnitude of the economic free fall in Southeast Asia’s five biggest economies was severe in the second quarter. Indonesia shrank 5.3% year-on-year, Malaysia 17.1%, the Philippines 16.5%, Singapore 13.3% and Thailand 12.2%, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
For months, Farah, 28, who asked to be identified only by her first name, has been futilely looking for a job in Kuala Lumpur. Furloughed from a teaching post at a tutorial centre in March, she has been relying on her husband’s modest pay from his job in a retirement home and a little government aid.
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