If 1998 was a year of excruciating pain for most Asian economies - which undoubtedly it was - then 1999 has been altogether a different story, one which has repeatedly and publicly been dubbed the year of Asian recovery by the world’s media. Even those Asian economists who were reluctant to forecast a supposed “V-shaped” recovery from that dire year of 1998 were gradually forced to admit gathering signs of economic expansion. From early 1999, it looked as if we could see a revival due to the Keynes-ianist policies adopted in the wake of the IMF’s policy U-turn of allowing significant monetary and fiscal easing.
In truth, the first signs had appeared in the last quarter of 1998. In Fhailand and Korea, where the crisis had begun, exports had collapsed and imports were continuing to contract by some 3000 year- over-year through the end of the third quarter reflecting an equal collapse in domestic demand. In Indonesia, domestic prices were still rising, but elsewhere they were falling, further confirmation of that slide in demand. However, in the fourth quarter of 1998, we started to see a marked reduction in the year/year contraction of imports in Thailand, Korea, the Philippines and even Indonesia. If the first sign of financial market stabilisation was the collapse of imports and the consequent, dramatic turnaround in national trade accounts, the first sign of economic stabilisation was paradoxically almost the complete opposite, that is the slowdown in import contraction if not the actual revival in imports.
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