UN forecasts 4.7% global economic growth in 2021
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations warned Monday that the world economy is “on a cliffhanger,” still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic whose impact will be felt for years but still expected to make a modest recovery of 4.7% in 2021 which would barely offset 2020 losses.
The U.N.’s new report on the World Economic Situation and Prospects said the once-in-a-century crisis sparked by the global impact of the coronavirus caused the global economy to shrink by 4.3% in 2020 -- the sharpest contraction in global output since the Great Depression that began in 1929 and far higher than the 1.7% reduction during the Great Recession of 2009.
“The depth and severity of the unprecedented crisis foreshadows a slow and painful recovery,” said U.N. chief economist Elliott Harris, the assistant secretary-general for economic development. “As we step into a long recovery phase with the roll out of the vaccines against COVID-19, we need to start boosting longer-term investments that chart the path toward a more resilient recovery -- accompanied by a fiscal stance that avoids premature austerity.”
According to the report, the lockdowns, quarantine measures and social distancing introduced during the second quarter of 2020 “helped to save lives but also disrupted the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.”
By April, it said, “full or partial lockdown measures had affected almost 2.7 billion workers, representing about 81% of the world’s workforce.” And it said another 131 million people were pushed into poverty, many of them women, children and people from marginalized communities.
China, the world’s second-largest economy where COVID-19 first emerged, was the only country in the world to register positive economic growth in 2020 -- 2.4% -- and the U.N. forecasts that it will grow by...
