The impact of COVID-19 on ASEAN

Abstract Starting in December 2019, COVID-19 had been spreading across the world on a limited scale for a quarter until March 2020 when the death toll in the countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) finally started to mount. However, despite the relatively late outbreak in the region, the ASEAN market had already plunged along with other regional markets across the world amid heightened concern about the economic impact of the biggest viral killer in 2020. In this paper, we examine the economic impact of coronavirus on different ASEAN countries separately by analysing their respective economic figures for the first two quarters in 2020. This allows us to delineate the overall picture of its impact on ASEAN countries as well as to provide an estimation for the future outlook of the ASEAN economic bloc. We propose that the slowing growth, the sluggish recovery of trade and the cross-country transmission of unemployment are three significant risk factors that the ASEAN economies are faced with.