The pandemic is crippling economies across the globe but for many countries, the economic shock will be magnified by the loss of remittances—money sent home by migrant and guest workers employed in foreign countries. Ralph Chami is an Assistant Director for the Institute for Capacity Development at the IMF. In this podcast, he says remittances are a lifeline for low-income and fragile states and when migrants lose their jobs those remittance flows stop. Chami says it's in everyone's interest for host countries to help support migrant workers through the pandemic.
Chami and IMF Deputy Managing Director Antoinette Sayeh co-authored Lifelines in Danger published in the June 2020 issue of Finance and Development Magazine.
While rich and poor are equally vulnerable to the debilitating physical effects of the coronavirus, economist Jonathan Ostry says the economic and social impact of the pandemic is much less equal. Ostry is Deputy Director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the IMF and in this podcast, he says the poor and the working class bear the brunt of pandemics and that policies need to pay specific attention to prevent long-term damage to the livelihoods of society's most vulnerable. Ostry's latest study on Inequality and pandemics is published by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) where he is a Research Fellow.
You can read Jonathan Ostry’s blog on how pandemics impact the poor at Blogs.imf.org
L'Afrique subsaharienne fait face à une crise sanitaire et économique sans précédent qui menace d'inverser une grande partie des progrès de développement qu'elle a réalisés ces dernières années. Les dernières perspectives économiques régionales montrent une contraction de 1,6% cette année, le pire résultat jamais enregistré. Papa N'Diaye est chef de la recherche au Département Afrique du FMI qui publie les perspectives. Dans ce podcast, N'Diaye dit que d'ici la fin de 2020, la région fera face à des pertes de revenus d'environ 200 milliards de dollars par rapport à ce qu'elle attendait il y a 6 mois.
Sub-Saharan Africa is facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis that threatens to reverse much of the development progress it's made in recent years. The latest Regional Economic Outlook shows the economy will contract by 1.6 percent this year; the worst reading on record. Papa N'Diaye is Head of Research in the IMF’s African Department that publishes the outlook. In this podcast, N'Diaye says by the end of 2020, the region will face income losses of about $200 billion relative to what they were expecting 6 months ago.
لم تسلم أي منطقة من الآثار الاقتصادية الناجمة عن جائحة فيروس كورونا. ويقول جهاد أزعور إن جائحة كوفيد-19 كان لها تأثير بالغ على منطقة الشرق الأوسط وآسيا الوسطى، نظرا لارتفاع مستوى الاعتماد على النفط والانتشار الواسع للعمل في القطاع غير الرسمي في كثير من بلدان المنطقة. ويرأس السيد أزعور "إدارة الشرق الأوسط وآسيا الوسطى" بصندوق النقد الدولي، وهي الإدارة التي أصدرت مؤخرًا تقرير آفاق الاقتصاد الإقليمي والذي يوضح التحديات الهائلة التي يفرضها التصدي لهذه الجائحة.
يمكنكم قراءة مدونات أخرى لجهاد أزعور حول التأثير العالمي لجائحة كوفيد-19.
No region has been spared the economic devastation of the coronavirus pandemic. And with the high level of oil-dependency and informality of many countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, Jihad Azour says the economic impact of COVID-19 has been dramatic. Azour heads the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia Department, which has just published the region's economic outlook that shows formidable challenges in the face of the pandemic.
You can read Azour's’s blog and others about the global impact of the pandemic at Blogs.imf.org