India’s stellar economic growth forecasts, together with strong predictions for a number of Southeast Asian countries, will be key global growth drivers.

This is according to new research by S&P Global Insights.

Asia-Pacific is a “key driver” for global economic growth both in the short and long term, said S&P Global’s Asia-Pacific chief economist, Rajiv Biswas.

“When we look over the next decade, we do expect Asia-Pacific to be the fastest growing region of the world economy,” he stated, making reference to bright spots such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

“A massive expansion on the way in the Indian economy, and also a very favourable outlook in Southeast Asia — where we expect pretty strong growth to continue in some of the economies, notably Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, will be among the world’s fastest-growing emerging markets over the decade ahead,” Biswas added.

Indeed, Vietnam’s Q2 GDP growth increased by 4.14% over last year; Indonesia’s economy grew 5.17% year-on-year in Q2, whilst the Philippine economy expanded 4.3% over the period, falling short of a 6% forecast rise by Reuters news agency.

India’s economy grew 7.8% between April and June, the fastest pace of growth in a year.

“India’s very robust actually… the momentum in the economy looks really quite strong at the moment,” the chief economist added. He echoed S&P Global’s forecast that India will overtake Japan to become the third-largest economy by 2030. The country’s GDP is forecast to increase from $3.5 trillion in 2022 to $7.3 trillion by 2030.

Furthermore, considering the region as a whole, Asia-Pacific’s growth is forecast to rise from 3.3% last year to 4.2% this year, as per S&P’s predictions.

“Over the next decade, we expect that about 55% of the total increase in [the] world’s GDP will come from the Asia-Pacific region,” he stated.