Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1361377
12 February, 2021 Strategic Update on APAC • In Japan, employment has not suffered as much in the pandemic, even though the economic shock was much larger. Economists said that aggressive policy steps by the government and the Bank of Japan helped to save jobs. The government introduced three stimulus packages that involved increasing spending by 72% in the current fiscal year. Policy banks provided zero- interest, collateral-free loans to cash-strapped businesses while the government gave them loan guarantees. The impact has shown that more businesses considered funding conditions easy rather than difficult, in a stark contrast to findings during the 2008 credit crisis. • Employment in India, remains lower than it was before the pre-Covid levels. Nearly 12 million additional people were employed during January 2021 at 400.7 million as compared to 388.8 million in December 2020, which was the highest since lockdown began in March 2020. The surge in employment in January helped offset some of the employment loss in the previous three months. • China's post-pandemic economy is showing signs of dramatic recovery with key indicators up after a full year of coping with the devastating effects of COVID-19. In January and February, China's industrial output escalated 35%. Employment rates have also improved as January showed that 1.48 million people are now employed in urban areas, with an unemployment rate of 5.4% compared to 5.5% in the previous month and 6.1% a year earlier. The unemployment rate remains highest among young people 16 to 24 years old at 13.1% • Vietnam's swift introduction of containment measures, combined with aggressive contact tracing, targeted testing, and isolation of suspected COVID- 19 cases, has kept recorded infections and death rates notably low on a per capita basis. In 2020, the Vietnamese economy expanded by 2.9%, one of the highest growth rates in the world, backed by the early rebound of domestic activities and robust export performance, particularly higher-tech exports of electronics.