WORLD ECONOMY BACK AT PREPANDEMIC LEVEL: DATA FIRM

The global economy has surpassed its pre-pandemic peak, data survey firm IHS Markit said as the recovery accelerates thanks to vaccination and the end of pandemic-related restrictions.

IHS Markit, which conducts monthly surveys of businesses that are highly valued by the market as a leading indicator of economic activity, forecasts that with 6.0 percent growth this year the global economy will post its biggest expansion in nearly 50 years.

“The global economy has reached an important milestone in the second quarter of 2021, surpassing the prepandemic real GDP peak attained in the fourth quarter of 2019,” the firm said in a statement.

The second quarter ends at the end of June. The Asia-Pacific region recovered from the pandemic recession at the end of last year thanks to the resilience of

China’s economy.

IHS Markit’s economists estimated that US real GDP hit a new peak in May.

The firm estimates that Africa and the Middle East will return to prepandemic GDP in the third quarter that begins in July.

Europe and Latin America will complete their recoveries in the final quarter of this year.

“As recovery from the Covid-19 recession is completed, the global economy is moving into the sweet spot of the current expansion,” said IHS Markit’s executive director for global economics, Sara Johnson.

“World real GDP growth is picking up from an annual rate of 1.5 percent quarter on quarter in the first quarter to rates of 6.0–7.0 percent over the remainder of 2021,” she added.

IHS Markit’s 2021 global GDP growth forecast is in line with that made by the International Monetary

Fund in April.

However, the IMF emphasised the unevenness of the recovery and said it expects many nations will not recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2022 or 2023.

Both the OECD and World Bank have also warned about the recovery leaving some nations behind, especially given the lack of vaccines in many countries.