translated from Spanish: IMF: “It’s a crisis like no other, the worst since 1929”

On Thursday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that the economy of at least 170 countries is affected by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the Fund forecasts a partial recovery in 2021 if a commercial reopening is achieved in the second half of this year. 
“If the pandemic fades in the second half of the year, allowing for a gradual lifting of containment measures and reopening the economy, our basic assumption is a partial recovery in 2021,” said the agency’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva. 

The coronavirus pandemic will cause “the worst economic fall since the Great Depression” of 1929, Georgieva, who also warned that emerging and poor countries such as those in Latin America are “at great risk.” At the same time, he stressed that the world is facing an “unparalleled crisis.”

According to the Washington-based agency, 170 countries out of its 189 members will register a contraction in their per capita income this year. The forecast changed for three months, when the Fund projected growth in 160 nations. In this regard, Georgieva said that global growth will be “markedly negative” in 2020, without giving figures, in a speech before the start of the agency’s semi-annual meetings during which the multilateral entity will publish its forecasts.

“We are still facing extraordinary uncertainty about the depth and duration of the crisis,” Georgieva said of the consequences of the respiratory virus. In addition, it indicated that just as the health emergency hits vulnerable people more strongly, the health crisis is expected to affect the poorest countries to a greater extent. Georgieva said emerging and poor countries, in Africa, Latin America and part of Asia, face great risk. He explained that they have fewer resources, with weaker health systems, and are also dangerously exposed to demand and supply disruptions, and with a “drastic tightening of financial conditions.” In this note:

Original source in Spanish

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