Jade Currie: ALL BLOG POSTS
Construction – and infrastructure development in particular – is expected to be a key driver of economic growth across ASEAN from 2021. The bloc, home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies and lowest unemployment rates, faced the novel coronavirus after years of health care infrastructure improvements, with much of the group reporting Covid-19 case-fatality rates below the global mean in 2020.
Alongside rising GDP and manageable public debt levels, Indonesia’s banks maintained robust performance in the six months leading to the pandemic. Monetary measures by the central bank to address headwinds in 2020 included lowering the reverse repo rate and purchasing government debt.
Indonesia’s robust economic growth in the years leading up to the pandemic, combined with low public debt, provided the country with a stronger cushion than in previous global crises.