Kristalina Georgieva, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, warned world of entering into recession and stated that this is going to be worse than 2008 global financial crisis. “We”re now in recession, it is way worse than the global financial crisis,” Georgieva said on Friday at a joint press conference with the World Health Organization (WHO), noting the “dual crisis” — health and economic crisis — caused by COVID-19 outbreak is unprecedented in the history of IMF,” she said.
So far, over 1 million COVID-19 cases have been reported globally and 50,000 deaths have been reported. To deal the crisis, IMF is deploying total financial capacity of $1 trillion. Noting that nearly $90 billion have flown out of emerging markets, even more than the scale seen during the 2008 global financial crisis, Georgieva said the IMF is mobilising emergency financing assistance to emerging markets and developing economies, which are hit hard by the pandemic.
Over 90 countries have placed a request to IMF for emergency financing, Georgieva said, calling on these countries to prioritize the use of financing to pay health workers, make sure health facilities functioning well, as well as support vulnerable people and firms. She warned a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs would make the recovery even more difficult.
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