In the International Monetary Fund’s recently released Regional Economic Outlook for Asia and the Pacific, growth prospects for the region were downgraded for the next two years. Following a robust 6.5 per cent post-Covid recovery in 2021, the IMF now forecasts the region to grow at a slower pace of 4 per cent in 2022 and 4.3 per cent in 2023, which is a fair bit lower than the average 5.5 per cent growth experienced over the last two decades. The growth downgrade is attribut