The current recession caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus and the reactions of the governments to is has people shocked around the world as businesses close and people struggle to survive on meager incomes. Now Bloomberg by way of Yahoo! News reports that the International Monetary Fund has declared the world economy is suffering the worst recession since the Great Depression a century ago.
The International Monetary Fund sees the world economy suffering its worst recession since the Great Depression this year, with emerging markets and low-income nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia at particularly high risk.
With half of the IMF’s 189 member countries seeking aid, the executive board has agreed to double access to its emergency financing to meet expected demand of about $100 billion, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech on Thursday.
The IMF’s baseline outlook is for a partial recovery in the global economy in 2021 if the pandemic fades in the second half of this year to allow a gradual lifting of containment measures, Georgieva said. She stressed that uncertainty about the coronavirus duration means things may wind up being even worse.
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The grim economic projections continue a reversal from the IMF’s outlook from less than two months ago. As recently as Feb. 19, the fund was telling Group of 20 finance chiefs that “global growth appears to be bottoming out.” Three days later, Georgieva predicted the virus would likely cut just 0.1 percentage point from the fund’s 3.3% global growth forecast for this year, although she acknowledged “more dire scenarios” were being studied. (source)