Weak growth data from India and Malaysia on Friday provided fresh evidence of the deepening impact of the global recession on developing Asia. The figures are likely to put pressure on authorities to take much more forceful fiscal and monetary interventionism to counter the downward spiral.

The 5.3 per cent growth from a year earlier in India and 0.1 per cent annual expansion in Malaysia’s economy in the fourth quarter of last year came as Japan’s manufacturing output suffered a record 10 per cent month-on-month drop in January. New job offers in Japan also plummeted 18 per cent to complete an abysmal set of recent figures from the world’s second-largest economy, including a record 45.7 per cent fall in exports in January.