TOKYO (Reuters) – The coronavirus pandemic battered Asian economies in April with social-distancing policies and company closures taking an especially heavy toll on the area’s service sector firms, studies revealed on Thursday.
FILE PHOTO: A shop assistance wearing a protective face mask following an outbreak of the coronavirus talk with a client at shopping mall in Tokyo, Japan, February 29,2020 REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Image
The outbreak, which has contaminated more than 2.5 million and eliminated about 180,000 worldwide, has actually also continued to paralyze production, shutting down factories and overthrowing supply chains across the export-heavy area.
Asia’s economic problems, seen in flash acquiring managers’ indexes on Thursday, are likely to be echoed in other parts of the world with similar surveys from significant European economies, such as Britain and Germany, expected to reveal enormous contractions in their factory and services sectors.
Collapsing service sector activity provides a major concern for federal governments g