World Economic Outlook report estimates that global GDP will shrink 3% in 2020
The International Monetary Fund building in Washington, the US. Picture: REUTERS/YURI GRIPAS
That compares to a January projection of 3.3% expansion and would likely mark the deepest dive since the Great Depression that lasted from 1While the fund expected growth of 5.8% in 2021, which would be the strongest in records dating back to 1980, it cautioned risks lay to the downside. Much depends on the longevity of the pandemic, its effect on activity and related stresses in financial and commodity markets, it said.
“This crisis is like no other,” Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s chief economist, wrote in a foreword to its semi-annual report. “Like in a war or a political crisis, there is continued severe uncertainty about the duration and intensity of the shock.” The grim projections are a stark reversal from the IMF’s outlook less than two months ago. On February 19, the fund told G20 finance chiefs that “global growth appears to be bottoming out”. Three days later, MD Kristalina Georgieva predicted the virus would likely cut just 0.1 percentage point from the fund’s global growth forecast for 2020, though she acknowledged “more dire scenarios” were being studied.
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