SINGAPORE -- Singapore taxi driver Ho Juan Sun is seeing his income fall as the island's economy sinks deeper into recession.

With millions of Asians like Ho feeling the tightening grip of the global financial crisis, governments are shifting the focus of their economic stimulus plans to include ways to put money directly into the pockets of consumers.

Just last week, Indonesia's finance minister said economic growth rested on the need to boost household consumption.

But analysts have doubts about how successful such policies can be. At best, they might limit the impact of the downturn, but won't restore regional economic growth, which is mainly driven by exports and thus demand from economies including the United States and Europe which are mired in recession.

"It makes a lot of sense to boost consumption, because there is nothing you can do on the export side," said Joseph Tan, chief Asia economist at Credit Suisse in Singapore.

"It will not be able to offset the collapse in export demand," he said.

Taxi driver Ho says his income has fallen by a fifth in the last six months. Uncertain about future earnings in an economy that has contracted for three straight quarters, he's decided against visiting his daughter in the United States during the Chinese New Year later this month.

"Business is getting more and more difficult -- people are spending less on taxi rides," he grumbled.

He's not alone in feeling the pinch.

Companies across Asia, including China's Lenovo Group, Japan's Sony Corp. and South Korea's Korea Electric Power Corp., are cutting jobs as they try to deal with shrinking markets.

Indeed, Chinese and Indian factories were cutting jobs at a record pace in December, purchasing managers' indexes showed.

Consumer confidence is also crumbling. In export-oriented South Korea it fell in December to its lowest level since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago when the country was bailed out of an economic meltdown by an International Monetary Fund-led rescue.

"There are two recessions currently occurring in Asia," said Frederic Neumann, economist at HSBC in Hong Kong. "The first is the well-rehearsed story of collapsing exports due to faltering demand in the West. The second, which is frequently overlooked, is the rapid slowdown in private consumption and investment."

Underlining the rapid deterioration in economic conditions in Asia's developing nations, the Asian Development Bank in December cuts its regional growth forecast for 2009 to an eight-year low of 5.8 percent just three months after forecasting 7.2 percent.

UPHILL TASK

Asian governments have deep enough pockets to pay for stimulus plans with some $4.0 trillion in currency reserves.

So far, authorities in Asia outside Japan have pledged about $640 billion in stimulus spending, among other measures including big interest rate cuts, since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September sparked a global financial storm.

Most of the money, including in China's $586-billion package unveiled in November, is geared to infrastructure projects. But policy makers are now looking to support consumers more directly.

This month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said his government would subsidize home appliance purchases in rural areas for five years, which could boost rural spending on televisions and mobile phones by 500 billion yuan ($73.3 billion).

And Credit Suisse reckons the government could raise the income tax threshold around the Lunar New Year holiday in the last week of January to try to spur consumption.

On Sunday, Taiwan will start to distribute shopping vouchers worth more than $100 per citizen and Indonesia's finance minister said last week the government would raise wages for civil servants and boost incomes for the poor.

"The hope of Indonesia's growth factor is actually household consumption," the minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, told Reuters last Tuesday.

Still, consumers will be reluctant to spend when they are seeing rising jobless rates and a stream of headlines about a slump in the world economy, analysts say.

Most significantly, the region is made up of savers. A lack of social welfare, like government support for the unemployed, means they save their money for emergencies rather than spend it.

For example, China's household savings are equal to about 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), while in the United States it has hovered near zero in recent years.

"It basically means you have to change the Asian mentality, which has always been fostered on high levels of savings rather than consumption," said Dwyfor Evans, economist at State Street Global Markets in Hong Kong.

In addition, exports dominate the Asian economic landscape so tend to have more impact on growth than consumption. In countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, exports are equal to more than 100 percent of GDP.

One hope for policy makers is that rapidly falling interest rates will at least discourage some savers and prompt them to spend instead, especially as many prices in the shops are easing.

"With abating inflation and loosening monetary policy we expect consumer spending and private investment to re-accelerate by the second quarter even if exports continue to linger for a little longer," said HSBC's Neumann.