IMF sees further global downfall

4 MILLION CASES As infections reach new milestone, IMF calls on US and China to avoid escalating their trade war

WASHINGTON/ LONDON/ BERLIN: The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday signalled a possible downward revision of global economic forecasts, and warned the US and China against rekindling a trade war that could weaken a recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

The IMF’S chilling warning has come at a time when the number of Covid-19 infections worldwide has crossed 4 million.

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’S managing director, told an online event hosted by the European University Institute that recent economic data for many countries was coming in below the fund’s pessimistic forecast for a 3% contraction in 2020.

“With no immediate medical solutions, more adverse scenarios might unfortunately materialize for some economies,” Georgieva said. “It is the unknown about the behaviour of this virus that is clouding the horizon for projections.”

The IMF’S April projection for a 3% contraction the global economy would mark the steepest downturn since t he Great Depression of the 1930s. The IMF forecast a partial rebound would follow in 2021, but warned that outcomes could be far worse, depending on the course of the pandemic.

LIVE ANIMAL MARKETS SHOULD REMAIN: WHO The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that although a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan selling live animals likely played a role in the emergence of the coronavirus, it does not recommend that such markets be shut down globally.

In a press briefing, WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek said live animal markets are critical to providing food and livelihoods for millions of people globally and that authorities should focus on improving them rather than outlawing them.

“Food safety in these environments is rather difficult and therefore, it is not surprising that sometimes we also have these events happening within markets,” Ben Embarek said.

Also, the WHO plans to launch an app this month to enable people in under-resourced countries to assess whether they may have the coronavirus, and is considering a Bluetooth-based contact tracing feature too, an official told Reuters on Friday.

MERKEL SAYS EUROPE WASN’T PREPARED Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas has said that Europe must acknowledge that it “wasn’t well-prepared” for the coronavirus pandemic.

I n a s t atement marking Europe Day, Maas said that initially most countries, including Germany, were focused on coping with the outbreak at home. While defending the national response as “necessary”, Maas said the European Union had “grown in the crisis”.