SINGAPORE -- Southeast Asian economies should collectively grow by around 5% this year and next, propelled by such fast-growing contributors as the Philippines and Vietnam, a regional observer group says in a report released Thursday.
Real gross domestic product is likely to grow by 4.9% in 2017 and 5.1% in 2018 in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc on healthy domestic demand, reports the ASEAN +3 Macroeconomic Research Office, or AMRO. The average growth rate from 2014 to 2016 was 4.2%.