WASHINGTON, October 13. /TASS/. The consequences of the crisis caused by the spread of the new coronavirus for the global economy may be more significant than anticipated, since the pandemic is not over yet, Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Gita Gopinath said presenting at the videoconference the organization’s October report.
This time real, large-scale shocks, pandemic, health crisis essentially block the service sector around the world, as well as consumer demand, discouraging investment, Gopinath said, adding that the pandemic is not over yet which means that its consequences could be even worse.
The IMF, Gopinath emphasized, hopes for positive results that may also be possible if significant progress is made in the health sector. At the moment, according to her forecasts, in most countries, GDP growth rates will only return to the indicators that were seen before the pandemic by 2022.
An outbreak of the disease caused by coronavirus infection was recorded at the end of 2019 in Central China and spread to most countries. On March 11, the World Health Organization recognized it as a pandemic. All countries and territories were forced to take various emergency sanitary and epidemiological measures, which led to a deep international economic crisis. According to the IMF forecast, this year the global economy will record a significant decline of almost 4.4%, but it will recover and grow by 5.2% next year.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.