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Description

The Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2013 (Key Indicators), the 44th edition of this series, includes the latest available economic, financial, social, and environmental indicators for the 48 regional members of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). This publication aims to present the latest key statistics on development issues concerning the economies of Asia and the Pacific to a wide audience, including policy makers, development practitioners, government officials, researchers, students, and the general public. Part I of this issue of the Key Indicators is a special chapter—“Asia’s Economic Transformation: Where to, How, and How Fast?”. Parts II and III comprise of brief, non-technical analyses and statistical tables on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and seven other themes. This year, the 2013 edition of the Framework of Inclusive Growth Indicators, a special supplement to Key Indicators is also included.

The statistical tables in this issue of the Key Indicators may also be downloaded in MS Excel format from this website or in user-specified format at SDBS Online.

Highlights  

Several priorities merit consideration for Asia’s continuing transformation:

• Developing Asia needs to make a significant qualitative leap in structural transformation and to focus on transferring labor from sectors of low productivity (typically agriculture) into sectors of high productivity;
• But future transformation will most likely not resemble in pace and direction that seen in Japan and the newly industrialized economies during the second half of the 20th century, as the overall economic environment is very different today. The rest of developing Asia may not be likely to transform as quickly as this group;
• Policymakers ought to focus on facilitating firms and workforces to develop the capabilities they need to manufacture new products, to enter new markets, and to move up the development ladder (i.e., to make and provide increasingly sophisticated and complex products and services);
• Developments in agriculture will be key for Asia’s future, in particular for the low-income economies. Agriculture has to “industrialize” (i.e., develop agribusiness and adopt modern methods) for the sector to achieve productivity levels similar to those in the economy as a whole; and
• History suggests that manufacturing is important and that industrialization has been nearly essential for an economy to achieve high income levels.

Contents

Part I – Special Chapter: Asia’s Economic Transformation: Where to, How, and How Fast? 

The special chapter on “Asia’s Economic Transformation: Where to, How, and How Fast?” analyzes the direction and pace of Asia’s transformation during recent decades and sketches the main contours of economic transformation that can be expected in coming decades. It highlights facts and insights that are important for developing Asia to consider in moving ahead: (i) agriculture needs to be modernized by deploying infrastructure, introducing technological improvements, developing agribusiness, and increasing linkages to global value chains; (ii) industrialization is a step that, in general, is difficult to bypass on the path to becoming a high-income economy; (iii) the service sector is already the largest source of employment and this trend will continue; (iv) basic education of high quality matters for industrial upgrading and, in general, for the development of new industries that can compete internationally; and (v) although it is important for countries to exploit their comparative advantages, some form of government intervention may be necessary and unavoidable to expedite economic transformation.

Part II – Millennium Development Goals

Part III – Regional Trends and Tables

Country profiles

The analytical results have different implications for different country profiles:

• Countries with large shares of employment in agriculture (such as Bangladesh, the PRC, India, Pakistan, and Thailand) need to develop industries and services that absorb labor. Concomitantly, the countryside will have to industrialize;
• The PRC and India are investing in science and engineering. So far, their efforts have been directed toward making inexpensive versions of existing goods. Over time, their role as innovators has to increase;
• For India and other economies that have bypassed industrialization or are experiencing transition from agriculture into low-quality services, the recommendation is to develop a deeper and broader industrial base;
• For the advanced Southeast Asian economies, the main recommendation is to focus on upgrading, as they are already quite diversified. Countries such as Malaysia and Thailand have developed institutional capacity to diversify their economies, but need to deepen and upgrade their industries to avoid being caught in the middle-income trap. To escape this trap, the Philippines needs to develop a much deeper industrial base to complement its service sector;
• Small, low-income economies such as Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Nepal can benefit from their comparative advantage in labor-intensive activities. But they should also implement policies and develop institutions that facilitate the accumulation of capabilities, foster diversification and upgrading, and target specific activities in more advanced industries, in order to progress from the simplest products into complex products and services;
• Most islands in the Pacific subregion will have difficulty industrializing. For them, the future lies in developing niches in some services;
• Economies that are rich in natural resources (e.g., Kazakhstan) need to manage those resources well and think about diversification; and
• Countries that are just embarking on a deep reform process, such as Myanmar, can benefit from the experiences of other countries that have gone through the process.

Country Tables  

Framework of Inclusive Growth Indicators

The Framework of Inclusive Growth Indicators 2013 (FIGI 2013) is the follow-up edition to FIGI 2012, which proposed a set of 35 indicators as measures of income and non-income outcomes of inclusive growth; the processes and inputs that are important to improve access to opportunities, social inclusion, social safety nets; and good governance and institutions.