The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the world’s current economic crisis is the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and no country is spared. The IMF estimates that the cumulative loss to global GDP from the pandemic could be around 9 trillion dollars.
Also read: IMF Declares Global Recession, 80 Countries Request Help, Trillions of Dollars Needed
The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since Great Depression
The IMF’s economic counselor and director of the research department, Gita Gopinath, has analyzed the world’s economic crisis and detailed her analysis in a report published on Tuesday. “The world has been put in a Great Lockdown,” she began, citing that countries have implemented the necessary quarantines and social distancing practices to combat the coronavirus pandemic. She elaborated:
The magnitude and speed of collapse in activity that has followed is unlike anything experienced in our lifetimes.
Gopinath sees the Great Lockdown as “the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the global financial crisis.” Her analysis considers that the coronavirus pandemic and required containment peak in the second quarter in most countries and recede in the second half of the year.
“This is a truly global crisis as no country is spared … several economies entered this crisis in a vulnerable state with sluggish growth and high debt levels,” the director opined. “For the first time since the Great Depression both advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies are in recession.”
$9 Trillion Loss
Gopinath further asserted that the possible “recovery in 2021 is only partial as the level of economic activity is projected to remain below the level we had projected for 2021, before the virus hit,” adding:
The cumulative loss to global GDP over 2020 and 2021
