Asian Development Outlook Supplement July 2021

This publication provides updated economic projections for developing Asia and the Pacific. It notes that recovery is underway but that regional growth in 2021 is expected to be 7.2%, which is 0.1% lower than was projected in April. Forecast upgrades for Central Asia and East Asia in 2021 partly offset downgrades for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. The regional growth projection for 2022 is upgraded from 5.3% to 5.4%.

Short Term Forecast of Container Throughput: New Variables Application for the Port of Douala

An accurate container throughput forecast is vital for any port. Since overall improvements in port performance and competitiveness can be derailed by port bottlenecks, ports need to find leverage to identify and prioritize measures to improve weak key performance indicators (KPIs) to attain growth opportunities. Prior studies had modeled container throughput from socio-economic and growth projection factors. This study aims to provide a practical method for forecasting the optimal container throughput a port can physically handle/attract given a certain level of terminal operation efficiency through random forest (RF) and multilayer perceptron (MLP) models. The study variables are derived from the port operations dimension and include ship turnaround time, vessel draft, container dwell time, berth productivity, container storage capacity, and custom declaration time. Evaluations are made based on the R-squared, NRMSE, MAE and MAPE. Model comparison is deduced with seven competing models in container throughput forecasting. The findings indicate that the RF model is a potential candidate for forecasting the engineering optimal throughput of Douala port. Model interpretation is provided through feature importance and partial dependence plots. The findings from this study will help reduce uncertainty and provide leverage for port management to spot bottlenecks and engage in better port planning and development projects which will strengthen their international competitive advantage.

Understanding Traffic Congestion via Network Analysis, Agent Modeling, and the Trajectory of Urban Expansion: A Coastal City Case

The study of patterns of urban mobility is of utter importance for city growth projection and development planning. In this paper, we analyze the topological aspects of the street network of the coastal city of Cartagena de Indias employing graph theory and spatial syntax tools. We find that the resulting network can be understood on the basis of 400 years of the city’s history and its peripheral location that strongly influenced and shaped the growth of the city, and that the statistical properties of the network resemble those of self-organized cities. Moreover, we study the mobility through the network using a simple agent-based model that allows us to study the level of street congestion depending on the agents’ knowledge of the traffic while they travel through the network. We found that a purely shortest-path travel scheme is not an optimal strategy and that assigning small weights to traffic avoidance schemes increases the overall performance of the agents in terms of arrival success, occupancy of the streets, and traffic accumulation. Finally, we argue that localized congestion can be only partially ascribed to topological properties of the network and that it is important to consider the decision-making capability of the agents while moving through the network to explain the emergence of traffic congestion in the system.

E-HAILING SERVICES IN MALAYSIA: CURRENT PRACTICES AND FUTURE OUTLOOK

E-hailing services are known to be on-demand vehicle acquisition that relies on network dependency and use of a specific digital application through the Internet. The objectives of this study were to investigate the adoption of e-hailing services from the initial inception, issues in adoption and the direction of e-hailing services within the context of Malaysia. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) related to the e-hailing industry was used by employing the inclusion criteria of keywords generated from the literature data pool. The legalisation of e-hailing services in Malaysia had spurred the growth of the industry. With the establishment of the Transportation Network Company, which was a positive sign for e-hailing to continue to flourish, the industry was considered as a complement to the existing public transportation system. The growth projection showed that e-hailing services will continue to be part of the Malaysian transportation sectors and would remain competitive in contributing to the domestic economy. However, some barriers would deter the progress of e-hailing services, such as over-regulation by the government.

The Gambia

On March 23, 2020, the Executive Board of the IMF approved a 39-month Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement for The Gambia in the amount of SDR 35.0 million (equivalent to 56.3 percent of quota). Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities’ initial policy response has focused on public health preparedness and containment. Staff has lowered the 2020 real GDP growth projection for The Gambia from 6.3 percent to 2.5 percent, although this assessment is subject to elevated downside risks.

The Gambia

On March 23, 2020, the Executive Board of the IMF approved a 39-month Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement for The Gambia in the amount of SDR 35.0 million (equivalent to 56.3 percent of quota). Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities’ initial policy response has focused on public health preparedness and containment. Staff has lowered the 2020 real GDP growth projection for The Gambia from 6.3 percent to 2.5 percent, although this assessment is subject to elevated downside risks.

COMPOSITION CAPACITY OF SIDEWALK AFFORESTATION USING THREE DIFFERENT SIZED TREES

Planning the sidewalk afforestation composition is critical to understanding tree development over time, as well as enabling trees to deliver their many quality benefits. The objective of this work was to evaluate the number of small, medium and large-sized tree species during eight growth projection moments on the streets of Irati city– PR. Different streets with and without power grids and streets with sidewalks larger and smaller than three meters were evaluated by counting the number of suitable trees in the appropriate spaces and the average increase in crown area of Lagerstroemia indica, Handroanthus albus and Paraptadenia rigida, over 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 years of growth projection. Data was transformed to attend the normality criteria and compared by the Tukey test at 5% probability, using an experimental design in subdivided plots. There was a significant difference and interaction between species size and projection time. The large-sized species presented higher increase in crown area throughout the years, despite the smaller number of trees that could be planted. This kind of species is advised for planting as long as proper maintenance is considered for trees to provide maximum benefits.

ECONOMIC GROWTH PROJECTION FOR EUROPEAN UNION BY 2030

The paper contributes to a discussion on developments in output for the EU-27 group over the next 11 years, up to year 2030. It departs from a discussion on arguments of the production function, with focus on sudden changes to population in Europe, its growth rate and composition. A brief study of population-decreasing events in the European historical perspective may represent an inspiring part. Reasons for inconsistency in estimated parameters of production function for European countries seems to be well-explained this way. The projection for the next 11 years, up to 2030 has employed the production function framework. Parameters have been estimated on the period 2004 – 2016 that matches most closely conditions that one may expect over the projection horizon. Feeding the estimated production function for the 2018-2030 forecast has employed projected population by Eurostat, while private capital investment has been generated by an ARIMA model. Projection is offered in two forms: (1) aggregated real output for the whole EU, and (2) the same category for each of the EU-27 countries.