The coronavirus impact: what we know so far

The coronavirus is severely impacting China’s economy and the incoming data suggest that this is spilling over to other economies, particularly in Emerging Asia. Tourist arrivals to Thailand are down by 50% y/y, while trade data for Korea collapsed in the first ten days of this month. With China’s factories still closed for business, the disruption to supply chains will intensify further. We’ll know more about the fallout once the surveys for February are released in the coming days and weeks. But as things stand, it looks like the virus will cause EM GDP to contract by 2% in q/q annualised terms.