(AFP)Malaysia leads growth downgrades by economists across Southeast Asia as the Delta variant forces countries to reimpose pandemic restrictions. The rapid spread of the highly infectious Delta variant and low vaccinate rates have caught much of Southeast Asia off guard. For the current quarter, forecasts for Malaysia’s GDP growth were slashed by the most in the region, by 2.8 percentage points from May’s survey. Thailand was second-worst, cut by more than 2 percentage points in both the third and fourth quarters. The Asian Development Bank last month downgraded its Southeast Asian growth forecast in its outlook supplement to 4% from 4.4%.

Source: Bangkok Post August 25, 2021 09:00 UTC