China may not move away from its stringent Covid Zero policy until the second half of next year, according to the International Monetary Fund’s top official in the country, who also called for more monetary and fiscal stimulus to support the economy.
The IMF assumes conditions for lifting the zero-tolerance approach to combating Covid infections will be in place by the latter half of next year, Steven Barnett, the senior resident representative in China, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Friday.
Barnett said the Covid policy worked well for China in 2020 and 2021 but has taken a heavy toll on the economy this year because of the highly transmissible nature of the omicron variant, which has led to lockdowns of major cities like Shanghai.