ASIA-PACIFIC REGION.

Byline: S.KAMAL HAYDER KAZMI

VIETNAM MAY BE ABLE TO AVERT A RECESSION IN 2020

Vietnam may be able to avert a recession this year as the country gets back to work and school after early coronavirus containment measures, an economist said on Monday. "They are not going to be immune to the slowdown of external global demand ... But we don't expect them to fall into a recession or contraction," said Sian Fenner, lead Asia economist at Oxford Economics. That is as Vietnam's early border restrictions and social distancing measures have helped the country avoid a large wave of infections.

The country also benefited from supply chain diversions due to the U.S.-China trade war and Fenner said those will continue to support the Vietnam's economy. On Monday, millions of students went back to school after three months at home, making Vietnam one of the first in Southeast Asia to ease movement restrictions. The country closed schools in early February when the first local cases were detected. Despite sharing a land border with China where the coronavirus first emerged, Communist Vietnam has reported just 271 cases and no deaths in a population under 100 million. It has not reported any new local cases in nearly three weeks.

PHILIPPINES GDP DECLINES FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 1998 ON SHUTDOWNS

The Philippine economy contracted in the first three months of 2020 as restrictions to stem the coronavirus outbreak shut most businesses and sapped consumption, a trend seen worsening in the current quarter. Gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter compared to a year ago, using 2018 as the new base year, the Philippine Statistics Authority said Thursday. That was worse than the median estimate of a 2.9 percent growth in a Bloomberg survey of economists and was the first contraction since the fourth quarter of 1998, according to the agency.

GDP slumped by 5.1 percent in the three months ended March 31 compared to the previous quarter, deeper than the 2 percent contraction expected by economists. That's the worst quarter-on-quarter performance on record. "Saving hundreds and thousands of lives has come at a great cost to the Philippine economy," Acting Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua said at a virtual briefing.

The second quarter will be worse because of the lockdown since midMarch that covers the capital and much of the Luzon island that accounts for more than half of domestic output. Last quarter's print surprised many analysts including Standard Chartered Plc's Chidu Narayanan and Natixis Asia Ltd's Trinh Nguyen who both see more policy rate cuts on the horizon.

PANDEMIC SETS JAPAN ON COURSE FOR DEEP RECESSION

Japan's household spending plunged in March and service-sector...

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