Pacific department, City in Ecuador

Bangkok, April 16 The economies of the Asia-Pacific region will experience zero growth in 2020, the worst since the 1960s, due to the COVID-19 pandemic although they will rebound strongly next year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday.Growth in Asia will be lower than even that experienced during the 2008 global financial crisis - when it was 4.7 per cent - and during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, when the region grew at 1.3 per cent, the Director of the IMF's Asia and Pacific Department, Chang Yong Rhee, said."That said, Asia still looks to fare better than other regions in terms of activity," said Rhee, adding that the global economy was expected to shrink 3 percent, the worst recession since the Great Depression of 1929, Efe news reported."Asia's key trading partners are expected to contract sharply, including the US by 6.0 percent and Europe by 6.6 per cent," the expert said.According to Rhee, China's growth will contract from 6.1 per cent in 2019 to 1.2 per cent in 2020, in contrast to the 9.4 per cent growth the country posted in 2009 following the global financial crisis on account of a fiscal stimulus by the government of 8 per cent of its GDP."We cannot expect that magnitude of stimulus this time, and China won't help Asia's growth as it did in 2009," the South Korean economist concluded.There have also been downward revisions of over 9 percentage points in the case of New Zealand (-7.2 per cent), Australia (-6.7 per cent) and Thailand (-6.7 per cent) while Pacific island countries were among the most vulnerable due to their limited healthcare and financial capacity.Rhee said that the prospects for 2021 are for "strong growth" despite being highly uncertain as they depend on the effectiveness of measures to contain the novel coronavirus and policy stimulus measures by governments.The IMF expert recommended targeted support to hardest-hit households and firms, given directly, not just through financial institutions.( With inputs from IANS )

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