Home » Steven Barnett, Chief Representative of the IMF in China: Speeding up vaccination and supporting low-income countries is the key to global economic recovery after the “epidemic”

Steven Barnett, Chief Representative of the IMF in China: Speeding up vaccination and supporting low-income countries is the key to global economic recovery after the “epidemic”

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China News Service, October 15 (Fan Zhonghua) “The current global economic recovery is still deeply affected by the epidemic, and the international community must work together to ensure economic recovery.” Steven Barnett, Chief Representative of the International Monetary Fund (hereinafter referred to as IMF) in China Pointed out at the first New Finance Youth Forum held today.

The latest forecast issued by the IMF shows that the global economy is expected to grow by 5.9% in 2021, which is higher than the global average growth rate in the 40 years before the new crown pneumonia epidemic, and is expected to grow by 4.9% in 2022.

Photo by Steven Barnett, Chief Representative of IMF in China

However, Steven Barnett pointed out that these data should be viewed in the context of the global economic contraction of 3.1% in 2020, “2020 is the worst year for the global economy since the Great Depression. Therefore, this year’s strong growth has actually concealed that the global economy is still affected by the epidemic. Influencing facts, for example, the global GDP in 2022 is still expected to be about 3% lower than the forecast before the epidemic.”

Steven Barnett said that under the impact of the global epidemic, the economic prospects of various countries have also highlighted huge differences. For example, advanced economies, due to their considerable policy space and high vaccination rates, are expected to return their economic output to the pre-epidemic level by the end of next year; China will also reach a level close to the pre-epidemic output in 2022; and even By 2024, the output of many low-income economies and emerging markets that lack policy space and vaccines is still expected to be 5.5% lower than before the epidemic.

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Therefore, Steven Barnett believes that to ensure the recovery of the global economy, the primary policy is to speed up global vaccination. “The IMF proposes that the vaccination rate of 40% of the global population needs to be reached by the end of this year, and 70% by the middle of 2022. If the epidemic continues to spread, the loss of global GDP in the next five years will exceed $5 trillion.”

“The world is a whole, and the epidemic will not end because of zeroing in any place, until the epidemic in all places disappears,” Steven Barnett quoted the IMF economic adviser as saying that although the vaccination rate in advanced economies is nearly 60%, But in low-income countries it is only about 4%.

Steven Barnett said that low-income countries are facing special challenges, one is vaccination, and the other is that they are facing large financing needs, high debt burdens, and rising financing costs. Therefore, another global policy to ensure economic recovery is to help distressed and low-income economies by providing them with liquidity support and debt relief.

Steven Barnett introduced that since the outbreak, the IMF has approved the largest special drawing rights allocation plan in history; it has provided more than US$115 billion in new financing to 87 countries, including 54 low-income economies; for 29 The lowest-income member countries have provided preferential policies for debt relief; at the same time, they cooperated with the Group of Twenty (G20) on the “Debt Suspension Initiative” and the “Common Framework for Subsequent Debt Handling of the Debt Mitigation Initiative.”

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In addition, Steven Barnett further pointed out that the global response to climate change and the transition to a green economy will also become a huge opportunity for economic recovery. “Specifically, if the policies are correct, this transformation could increase global GDP by about 2% and create 30 million new jobs by 2029,” said Steven Barnett. If successful, this transformation will benefit the entire planet and world economy. (over)

【Editor in charge: Li Mingyang】


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