In 1998, the legacy of the Asian Financial Crisis still weighed heavily across the region’s economies. The crisis itself—unfolding through 1997 and into the following year—left few sectors untouched. For those interested in the intersection of economic contraction and infrastructure, the power generation industry stands out as a particularly telling case. ISIC 3510—electric power generation, transmission, and distribution—serves as the main statistical lens. The code offers a consistent register of the firms and plants responsible for keeping the lights on, but reading its entries for signals of crisis and response requires care, and sometimes more patience than one might expect.
The process begins with the assembly of all firms registered under ISIC 3510 in affected Asian economies—Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, among others—for the period in question. The roster is not static. Some countries liberalized or partially privatized power generation just before the crisis, so the population of firms sometimes shifted even as the storm hit. Sorting through regulatory filings, annual reports, and sectoral directories helps distinguish between public utilities, independent power producers, and new market entrants. Many of these companies produced detailed output reports, sometimes quarterly, sometimes only annually, and often with different reporting standards from country to country.
To measure the relationship between economic contraction and electricity demand, a stepwise approach is useful. First, gather generation and consumption data—preferably monthly or quarterly—from utilities, grid operators, and energy regulators. The timing matters. In many economies, GDP growth slowed sharply in late 1997, bottoming out through 1998. Comparing electricity generation (in gigawatt-hours or comparable units) before, during, and after this period gives a first sense of the shock. Some plants operated well below capacity, or were idled entirely, as factories slowed production and households tightened budgets.
Correlating these output figures with macroeconomic indicators is less a matter of statistical complexity than of matching timelines. Plotting GDP growth rates and electricity demand on the same axis, by country, helps clarify the lag—or, sometimes, the suddenness—of the demand drop. The relationship is rarely perfectly linear. In heavily industrialized regions, electricity usage tracks economic contraction closely; in others, where household consumption or government spending dominated, the connection is sometimes muted. Not every megawatt lost in demand can be traced directly to a GDP line item.
Further nuance comes from the composition of the power sector. In countries where independent power producers had signed take-or-pay contracts, the crisis led to surpluses and stranded costs, not just drops in generation. Some governments intervened, restructuring payment schedules or re-nationalizing failing utilities. These policy responses, visible in company filings or parliamentary debates, offer additional clues about the crisis’s reach.
Another layer comes from regional disparities. Urban and export-oriented provinces often saw sharper drops in electricity demand, mirroring the collapse of manufacturing and trade. Rural areas, more insulated from global capital flows, sometimes fared better—or at least experienced a gentler slope downward.
Documentation, as always, is vital. Each step—how firms were sorted, which data series were used, how periods were defined—should be recorded. In some places, data gaps are substantial: rolling blackouts, missing quarterly reports, or abrupt operator changes. Even these gaps, frustrating as they are, say something about the stress the sector endured.
Taken together, ISIC 3510-coded firm data and electricity generation figures provide a window into the broader story of the Asian Financial Crisis. The links between economic contraction and power output are not always crisp, but in the rolling curves of demand, and the uneven recovery that followed, the shape of the crisis—and the sector’s resilience—becomes visible. For those willing to map these details patiently, the story is both sobering and instructive, hinting at how tightly the fate of infrastructure and the wider economy are bound.
