In its latest annual report on regional growth prospects, the Asian Development Bank focuses on the impact of natural disasters and ensuring resilience. Join us for a discussion on the causes of disasters, how insurance systems and other market mechanisms could impact risks, and the role of government including infrastructure development and recovery assistance. The ADB’s chief economist will also address findings of the latest Asian Development Outlook including the impact of ongoing trade disputes for the Asia Pacific region including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific.

Selected Quotes

Yasuyuki Sawada

“Overall, Asia’s growth and inflation focus and prospect seems to be quite good-looking, although growth rate is slightly slowing down. Highest risk, largest risk, we identify is prolonged negotiation... trade negotiation between the U.S. and China.”

“Trade policy uncertainty [in the PRC] is the highest right now. And we can trace back to 1995, when U.S. - PRC had an intellectual property rights tension, that we see a spike. And also when China joined WTO, we see another spike… Using this past uncertainty measure, and also much with the actual investment, business investment measure, we can uncover what is impact on uncertainty on business investment, which is shown in the right figure. Investment goes down if tension increase, especially first four quarters of one year… Actually this uncertainty and change in expectation seems to generate tangible impact on investment, production, and also slowing down of growth.”

Photos

Header Image Copyright 2013 EUMETSAT.