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By APD writer Melo M. Acuna
MANILA, April 13 (APD) – World Bank economists see growth in East Asia and Pacific to remain strong and reach 6.3 percent in 2018.
This was the gist of World Bank’s economic forecast released from Jakarta in a regional teleconference with business and economics reporters from across Asia Thursday morning.
WB Chief Economist Sudhir Shetty said prospects for a continued broad-based global recovery and robust deinestuc denabd ybderoub this positive outloot.
“Still, emerging risks to stability and sustained growth require close attention,” he was quoted saying.
Speaking of China, Shetty said after growing faster than anticipated in 2017, the world’s second biggest economy “would slow moderately to 6.5 percent in 2018 “because the Chinese economic continues to rebalance away from investment and towards domestic consumption with policies that focus more on slowing credit expansion and improving the quality of growth.
Without China in the World Bank’s forecast, Mr. Shetty said growth in developing East Asia and Pacific is expected to remain stable in 2018 at 5.4 percent, reflecting continued robust domestic and external demand.
However, Mr. Shetty and his team advised policy makers in the region to attend to the short-term risks associated with a faster-than-expected rise in interest rates in advanced economies and posssible exlacation of trade tentions.
The way to respond to macroeconomic stability, various governments should be able to consider tightening their monetary policies and further strengthen their respective macroprudential regulation and build fiscal buffers.
The World Bank recommended to countries to reverse moderating growth prospects across the region in the medium term, different countries will need to find ways of raising their own long-term potential growth by improving public spending and infrastructure provision, deepen trade integration and imporve trade facilitation and implement reforms to enhance competitiveness and build human capital.
Aware of the continued threats to the global trading system, the World Bank experts recommended to developing East Asia and Pacific countries to deepen their own trade integration and facilitation through ASEAN Economic Community, the Comprehensive and Progressing Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Belt & Road Initiative.
“These measures will be even more important as countries adapt their manufacturing-led development strategies to the emerging challenges of labor saving technologies and automatin,” the World Bank statement said.
Mindful of the evolving technologies, the WB economists said basic numeracy and familiarity with digital technology will be essential.
It recommended the improvement of schools’ effectiveness and education systems need to be a priority in many countries in the region where most students are in school but many are not learning.
Experts said there is a need for strengthening social assistanced, insurance programs and increased resilience to systemic shocks seen as key to ensure the economically insecure are not left behind.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
