In the NIEs and the ASEAN economies, domestic demand has been weak while export growth has been decelerating, and these economies have been slowing. A slowdown in the world economy taken as a whole has become evident as the effects of the financial crises in the United States and Europe spread steadily to Asian economies.
According to the World Economic Outlook released at the beginning of last month by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), output of advanced economies is expected to contract for the first time in the post-war period; growth in emerging economies is also expected to decline from the past several years' high growth of around 8 percent to 5-6 percent; and the growth of world output is projected to fall substantially to 2.2 percent.