Growth in East Asia and Pacific has remained resilient and is expected to ease only modestly from 2016 to 2018, according to a new World Bank report released on Monday.
According to the report, growth in East Asia is expected to ease from 6.5 percent in 2015 to 6.3 percent in 2016 and 6.2 percent from 2017 to 2018.
This reflects China's gradual shift to slower, more sustainable growth, which is expected to be 6.7 percent in 2016 and 6.5 percent in 2017, compared with 6.9 percent in 2015.
"Developing East Asia and Pacific continues to contribute strongly to global growth. The region accounted for almost two-fifths of global growth in 2015, more than twice the combined contribution of all other developing regions," said Victoria Kwakwa, incoming World Bank East Asia and Pacific Regional Vice President.
"The region has benefited from careful macroeconomic policies, including efforts to boost domestic revenue in some commodity-exporting countries. But sustaining growth amid challenging global conditions will require continued progress on structural reforms."
The East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, which is published twice a year with a comprehensive review of the region's economies, examines the region's growth prospects against a challenging backdrop: slow growth in high-income countries, a broad slowdown across emerging
markets, weak global trade, persistently low commodity prices, and increasingly volatile global financial markets.
According to the report, if exclude China, the region's developing countries grew by 4.7 percent in 2015, and the pace of growth will pick up slightly to 4.8 percent in 2016 and 4.9 percent in 2017 to 2018, driven by growth in the large Southeast Asian economies. However, the outlook for individual countries varies, depending on their trade and financial relationships with high-income economies and China, as well as their dependence on commodity exports.
Among the large developing Southeast Asian economies, the Philippines and Vietnam have the strongest growth prospects, both expected to grow by more than 6 percent in 2016. In Indonesia, growth is forecast at 5.1 percent in 2016 and 5.3 percent in 2017, contingent on the success of recent reforms and implementation of an ambitious public investment program.
