Moody's on Tuesday lowered growth forecast for the Asia-Pacific (Apac) region to 5.2 per cent for 2020 citing the lingering impact of the coronavirus outbreak in China, the impact of which will be more pronounced on China and India.
The coronavirus that emerged in China early January has killed over 1,860 people and infected more than 72,000 so far and there is no end in sight yet. The epidemic has forced China to shutter over a dozen of its teeming cities, locking up over 60 million people and closing down tens of thousands of factories, impacting the global supply chain. The impact of the shuttering is large as China contributes a whopping 16 per cent of global GDP, up from 4 per cent when it was hit by the SARS virus in 2003 and consumes over a fifth of metals globally besides controlling over 40 per cent of the global apparel and textile trade.
As of now, from the supply side, the electronics market is the worst hit as the Hubei province, the fountainhead of the epidemic outbreak, is known as the 'Optics Valley' of the world.