Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

IMF Foresees Temporary, But Tough, Impact of Corona Over Economies


Sat 21 Mar 2020 | 11:07 AM
Yassmine Elsayed

A senior official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated that the impact of the Corona virus global spread will be very tough, noting though, that the crisis happened after a long period of growth and high employment rates which would help the global economy to stand the ongoing crisis.

Reuters quoted Martin Mühleisen, director of the Fund's Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, said in an audio post that the main goal of governments should be to limit the spread of the virus in a way that creates confidence that the economic shock will be temporary.

He added that banks and governments have already taken unprecedented measures to provide liquidity to markets and secure their continued work, "perhaps with more than what is needed", but such steps should be coordinated globally to maximize their impact.

"The better organized and more coordinated proper responses to the crisis, the faster the possibility of restoring confidence," he added.

Last week, the leaders of the G7 said that they would do "everything necessary" to confront the outbreak, but they did not give details, which caused discontent among the markets.

G20 leaders will hold a virtual summit meeting in next few days, but pisions within the group lessen hopes for strong and coordinated action, according to experts.

Earlier, experts believed that the virus spread had hit the tourism industry, with fewer visitors and lockdown measures, and also export industries.

According to World Health Organization, Corona viruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV).

Corona virus disease (COVID-19) is a new strain that was discovered in 2019 and has not been previously identified in humans.

Corona viruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people.  Detailed investigations found that SARS-CoV was transmitted from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV from dromedary camels to humans. Several known corona viruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans.