Impact Of Covid-19 On Asian Economies And Policy Responses

by Sumit Agarwal, Bernard Yeung, Zhiguo He

On March 12th 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spreading of the new virus, 2019-nCoV, a pandemic. In Asia, the virus, more commonly referred to as COVID-19, has been spreading since the end of December. To contain the public health threat, almost all countries enforced a variety of measures, including lockdowns, to minimize face-to-face human interactions between the infected and the susceptible.While these vigilant measures save lives, they also generate a substantial negative economic shock that immediately halts demand and significantly disrupts supply, global production value chain and trade. The consequences are dire — considerable decline in output, massive surge in unemployment, countless bankruptcy cases, and unrelentless worries over financial stability. The result, a worldwide economic setback, is more severe than that experienced during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.Asia's experiences with COVID-19 precede that in the West. This fortuitous timing allows Asia to share its learnings drawn from experiences to benefit the world.The Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research's (ABFER) community has gathered a collection of insights to inform the public. Besides providing access to research on the pandemic conducted in Asia, these commentaries offer comprehensive information on the effects of the pandemic, the effectiveness of measures employed to contain it and the subsequent economic impacts from such implementation. With granular analyses of government policies and their associated economic rescue packages, these commentaries elucidate the hard trade-offs between public health protection and economic security. Finally, the commentaries address the broader impact of the pandemic on international trade, global value chains and society.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 23, 2020

About the author

Sumit Agarwal, MD, MLA Group of Industries, Kanpur was born in 1975. After completing his five year integrated course in Chemistry and a minor in management from IIT Kanpur, MBA-Marketing from NM Institute, he is now managing a group of chemical manufacturing industries in Kanpur (www.mlagroup.com )

A strong nationalist at heart, he is running an NGO, PRERNA (www.prernaa.org ), which is dedicated to the development of a stronger India. PRERNA is currently partnering management of 6 adopted government primary schools with an objective to facilitate best quality education in Government schools. He has been awarded by the Governer of UP for his contribution to primary education. He is also the founder of Kasauti, a consortium of NGOs to aid clean and answerable politics.

Through his first book “The Four Patriots” he aims to introduce and popularize a new genre- patriotic fiction, to encourage and inspire people to actively participate in the country’s development. Apart from the fact that the book is being published by Rupa Publishers, the leading publishing house in the country, the story has already been adopted for a movie by a leading production house.

He is also a music composer, lyricist, singer and writer. Over the last two years, he has composed many soulful songs based on relationships, patriotism and human emotions. Two of his songs have been aired on MTV Indies this year. His music videos can be viewed on his Youtube Channel, Sumit Agarwal,or on his website www.sumitagarwal.net.

An adept multi-tasker, he is also a speaker on topics related to nation building, work life balance and multi-tasking.

Reviews

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Borrowed this for a joke but I ended up reading the whole thing. I gained absolutely nothing from it. Slightly miffed that they did not include "Is ASEAN Safe-Distancing? Unmasking the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Intra-ASEAN Cooperation" (Katyal and Tan, 2020) in this collection.