The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a staggering gloom over global economic growth prospects far and wide. Yet, there is still a silver lining as world powers seek more coordinated global responses and observers point to China's promising recovery.
BEIJING, April 11 -- The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the world economy and cast a staggering gloom over growth prospects far and wide, incurring a short-term collapse in global output and widening tolls on various industries and the masses.
Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said Thursday it is clear that global growth will turn "sharply negative" in 2020, as COVID-19 has disrupted the world's social and economic order "at lightning speed and on a scale that we have not seen in living memory."
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks at a press conference in Washington D.C., the United States, on March 4, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
"In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression," she noted.
Yet, there is still a silver lining for the virus-stricken global economy, as world powers scramble to ameliorate acute pains by seeking more coordinated global responses, and observers worldwide point to China's promising recovery as a lighthouse across oceans.
"DARKEST HOUR" APPROACHING
Economies around the world have been suffering internal and external shocks on both supply and demand sides with production chains disrupted, global trade almost put on hold, as well as consumer and investor sentiment gravely dampened. Consequently, unemployment rates worldwide have reached new heights.
The World Trade Organization has recently projected that goods trade would contract much more in 2020 than in the 2008-09 global financial crisis, with a downside range of 13-32 percent due to high uncertainty over the economic impact of the pandemic.
In the financial field, asset markets in advanced economies have cratered, and capital has been pouring out of emerging markets at a breathtaking pace.
"A deep economic slump and financial crisis are unavoidable. The key questions now are how bad the recession will be and how long it will last," Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University, wrote in an article published by Project Syndicate on Thursday.
