HOW BAD WILL SARS BE FOR ASEAN ECONOMIES?
Assuming the problem gets a little worse and people are still fearful of the Sars disease, then I think the problem could be worse than the [1997] Asian financial crisis. For the Asian financial crisis–it’s companies overborrowing and there was a loss in the confidence in the companies. So, stock prices collapsed, the banking system was hit. You can put that right. This one is a crisis of fear, it’s psychological. So people begin to avoid to travel, airlines are hit, hotels are badly hit, the confidence in consumers is gone and so long as we do not reverse this fear, the economy is going to be hit very badly. AND WHAT ABOUT THE IMPACT ON SINGAPORE? We had shaved the growth rate down by about 1.5%. In terms of GDP loss, that would be in excess of S$1.5 billion ($845 million). This is in relation to what we think we could have done without the Sars crisis. WILL SARS HAVE A BIGGER IMPACT ON SINGAPORE THAN THE FINANCIAL CRISIS DID? Yes, because for the financial crisis in 1997 we were les
