A useful exercise would be to monitor the impact of the 1997 crisis on selected economic
and social indicators and where possible compare it to the 2008 crisis. At the very least the
impact of the 1997 crisis will help identify areas of vulnerability that may emerge as a result
of the more recent crisis.
Table 16 shows that average GDP growth fell during the period surrounding the 1997 crisis
(1997-99). Hence it is expected that economic growth during the period 2008-10 will average
between 2–2.5 percent, after posting a robust 5.8 percent in 2005-07. This will be lower than
the 2.7 percent average in 1997-1999 largely because the crisis at that time did not involve a