- The International Monetary Fund’s assessment of the state of the global economy has changed little over the past three months.
- This may be attributed to the ebbs and flows of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A Guardian news source says that global economic recovery from Covid could go wrong, according to Larry Elliot.
What is happening in emerging markets?
Beneath the surface, though, plenty has been going on. The outlook for advanced countries has improved while that for emerging market economies has deteriorated. A new north-south divide is opening up and that’s a big concern.
The causes for the rift
The explanation for the rift is simple: rich countries have the financial power to support their economies through the crisis while poor countries do not.
The IMF’s forecast for UK growth (which predates the “pingdemic”) has been revised up to 7% – the strongest since the second world war – because of the vaccination programme and Rishi Sunak’s continued support for wages.
Poorer countries are less fortunate
Poorer countries are less fortunate, which is why their vaccine programmes lag well behind those in advanced countries and, in some cases, have barely begun at all.
The world is now two blocs: better-off countries that can look forward to life returning to something like normal by the end of the year; and those that still face rising infection rates and death tolls.
But, as the IMF rightly notes, permanent recovery is not guaranteed even in parts of the world where infection rates are relatively low so long as the virus is circulating elsewhere.
A lesson painfully learned over the past 18 months is that the virus does not respect national boundaries.
Where did it go wrong?
So what could go wrong? The IMF has come up with two downside scenarios: one in which emerging countries are hit by a new wave of the virus this year and advanced countries rapidly reverse stimulus policies in the face of rising inflation; and a second in which rising infections affect rich countries as well as poor.
In the first scenario, global growth would be 0.75% lower this year and 1.5% lower next than the IMF is currently forecasting.
In the second, 0.8 percentage points are shaved off growth in both years. In both cases, the global economy ends up $4.5tn (£3.3tn) smaller than expected by 2025.
What are the precautions that should be taken?
Precautions can and should be taken to prevent these scenarios from happening. There needs to be a multilateral push to ensure vaccines are more widely available.
Rich countries don’t really need their share of a recently agreed $650bn allocation of IMF special drawing rights, which boost the reserve assets of member countries.
They should redistribute them so that poorer countries have greater fiscal firepower. Domestically, advanced nations need to be extremely careful about withdrawing stimulus too soon.
The IMF’s message is that plenty could still go wrong. It is a warning worth heeding.
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Source: The Guardian
