LAHORE: It’s about a week, the world will be bidding adieu to 2020, an eventful and dreadful year, but the last sun will not set on December 31, before taking a massive toll on the health, economy, social behaviours, careers and life-styles of over 7.8 billion inhabitants breathing on the earth.
Covid-19 has thus adversely affected almost all hence, making the global actors ponder as what should be done next year to prioritise global health, democracy, trade, human rights and arms control etc. The world stands changed and transformed in a few good ways too, for example, the previously tattered Ozone layer is now repaired due to lesser carbon emission from largely reduced air traffic, and the plummeting industrial and transportation activities. For economists, this transformation will result in poverty but those who love to see a balanced and healthy eco-system, the change is welcome.
While the human lives have provided viable alternatives to real-life fun during 2020, the practical and profitable online solutions were provided by digital technology for many events like shopping, concerts, festivals and movies etc, which normally require an in-person attendance. Men opted to distance themselves from fellow men, preferring laptops and cell phones over traditional social contacts. Awareness for personal hygiene methods and growing demand for related products like sanitizers, medicated soaps, gloves and masks led many to find business niches.
Travel plans got shattered, resultantly affecting the hotel, aviation, tourism and hospitality industries, while many blooming and prosperous fashion and clothing businesses came on the verge of closure, bankruptcy and collapse, as damage already done on global economic front. Although, both the United States and the United Kingdom have begun testing and administering Covid-19 vaccines, but lot of damages have already been done to the international economy, whose GDP size is around $90 trillion mark. Nobody knows the date, as when will these biological preparations provide immunity to Covid-19.
According to the international news agency,” the World Bank had said in October, 2020, that the coronavirus pandemic could push as many as 150 million people into extreme poverty by the end of 2021, wiping out more than three years of progress in poverty reduction. The news agency had stated, “The multilateral development lender said that an additional 88 million to 115 million people will fall into extreme poverty - defined as living on less than $1.90 a day in 2020. The report said this could grow to 111 million to 150 million by the end of 2021. It would mean that 9.1-9.4 percent of the world’s population would be living under extreme poverty this year, about the same as 2017’s 9.2 percent and representing the first rise in the extreme poverty percentage in about 20 years. The 2019 extreme poverty rate was estimated at about 8.4 percent and had been expected to drop to 7.5 percent by 2021 before the coronavirus pandemic. The report said that without swift, substantial policy actions, a longstanding goal of cutting the rate to 3 percent by 2030 looked out of reach.”
Pakistan's economy and projections for 2021:
As far as Pakistan's economic outlook for 2021 is concerned, the World Bank had forecast an “anemic” 0.5 percent growth for the country in October 2020. The half-a-percentage economic growth rate is far below the official target of 2.1 percent that the incumbent Imran Khan-led PTI regime had set for its 3rd year in power. As per the World Bank’s forecast, Pakistan’s economic outlook remains fragile for at least two years, as the outbreak of the coronavirus respiratory disease compounded the country’s miseries.
The Washington DC-based lender had further projected, “Vulnerable households rely heavily on jobs in the services sector, and the projected weak services growth is likely to be insufficient to reverse the higher poverty rates precipitated by the pandemic. Given anemic growth projections in the near term, the poverty is expected to worsen. A possible resurgence of the infection, widespread crop damage due to locusts and heavy monsoon rains pose major risks to the outlook. Despite weak activity, consumer price inflation rose from an average of 6.8 percent in fiscal year 2019, due to surging food inflation, hikes in administered energy prices, and a weaker rupee, which depreciated 13.8 percent against the US dollar in last fiscal year.”
Year 2021 and the South Asian economies:
For South Asia, the World Bank’s chief economist for the region, Hans Timmer, had viewed, “The news is not good and the outlook is dire for South Asia. The GDP tells only part of the story as the informal sector is hit more than its proportion.” Meanwhile, the World Bank’s vice-president for South Asia Region, Hartwig Schafe had said, “The collapse of South Asian economies during Covid-19 has been more brutal than anticipated, worst of all for small businesses and informal workers, who suffer sudden job losses and vanishing wages.”
IMF cuts its global economic forecasts for 2021:
According to an October 13, 2020 report of the international TV channel,” IMF has slashed its global economic forecasts for 2021, whereby warning of a 'long and uneven' recovery. The IMF predicted that the world economy would shrink by 4.4 percent in 2020, a less severe contraction than it forecast in June. The improvement is driven by a stronger than expected bounce in the United States and Europe after lockdowns lifted, as well as China's return to growth. However, the organisation downgraded its outlook for 2021. The IMF now sees a 5.2 percent increase in global output next year, down from 5.4 percent in its previous report. Last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) also lowered its forecast for 2021.
According to the IMF, the global growth is expected to slow to roughly 3.5 percent between 2022 and 2025, leaving the output of the most economies below levels that were predicted before the pandemic. It cautioned that slow growth over such an extended period would have large aftershocks, as worsening inequality and a ‘severe setback’ for improvements to living standards, both in developed economies like the United States and emerging markets like Mexico and Argentina, would stoke poverty and damage growth. The IMF had predicted that the 19 countries that use the euro will experience a harsher contraction but a sharper recovery, with output falling by 8.3 percent this year before jumping 5.2 percent next year. Among major economies, only China is expected to expand in 2020. The IMF believes the country, which battled Covid-19 earlier than the rest of the world and was quickly able to move out of lockdown due to strict containment measures, will grow by 1.9 percent.
Plunging Oil demands during 2021:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has cut its forecast for oil demand growth by 400,000 barrels a day to show a decline of 8.8 million barrels per day. The IEA expects oil demand to rise by 5.8 million barrels per day in 2021, compared with a predicted increase of 5.5 million barrels per day in its report last month. It said during 2021, the demand would recover by 5.8 million barrels per day to 97.1 million barrels per day, about 3 million barrels per day below the pre Covid level in 2019. The agency said, “Weak historical data and the resurgence of Covid-19 in Europe and the United States led us to revise down our near-term global demand outlook by 400,000 barrels per day in Third Quarter of 2020, 1.2 million barrels per day during the Fourth Quarter and 700,000 barrel per day during the First Quarter of 2021.” Surges in Covid-19 cases across the United States and Europe will drag on global demand growth, while major consumption hubs, such as China and India are seeing an improvement in energy use.
The ‘international news channel’ says year 2021 can be more devastating for many nations:
In its December 16, 2020 edition, the ‘news channel,’ had viewed, “For many countries, the long tail of the pandemic could make next year even more devastating than 2020. The coronavirus, combined with climate change and conflict, is expected to exacerbate already long-running crises in many developing countries next year, according to a new report from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a major US humanitarian group.” The media house had opined, “Despite the gravity of the pandemic, the direct impact of Covid-19 in areas, where the IRC operates was less damaging than feared, the CEO David Miliband said. But it came with disastrous side effects, he added, including disrupting supply chains, causing food insecurity in some countries, and driving people away from hospitals, resulting in poor treatment for other diseases, including malaria. Many of these are worsening life in the countries named on IRC's annual emergency watch list, which identifies places at risk of humanitarian catastrophe. Extreme poverty caused by lockdowns and border closures, for example, could trigger famines in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, and Yemen, it warns.”
Pandemics and epidemics are often followed by unrest:
Numerous international websites and relatively unknown media houses have warned that these worsening financial inequalities among humans all over the world have often historically triggered and ignited global protests, especially during the periods following pandemics and epidemics. In a study recently published in an American journal, “Peace economics, peace science and public policy,” Massimo Morelli, a political science professor at Bocconi University in Milan, and Roberto Censolo, an economics professor at Italy’s University of Ferrara, have looked at 57 epidemics between the black death, which started in 1346, and the Spanish flu, which began in 1918 — and how many revolts, rebellions, uprisings, and protests occurred in those same time periods. Major diseases of the past, they write, have often led to uprisings because of how those epidemics heightened social tensions. The researchers had found out that there were 39 rebellions before an epidemic and 71 after, showing how these epidemics were “incubators” for unrest.
Will major measles outbreaks haunt the world during 2021?
According to a web portal researchers have stressed that major measles outbreaks would likely occur in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic as early as 2021, due to many missed vaccinations. Measles is a highly contagious illness caused by a virus that replicates in the nose and throat of an infected child or adult.
The study published in the 197-year old British medical journal “The Lancet,” has called for urgent international action to prevent potentially devastating measles epidemics in the coming years, as many children have missed out on measles vaccination this year, making future measles outbreaks inevitable.
Malnutrition worsens the severity of measles, leading to poorer outcomes and more deaths, especially in low and middle income countries. According to the researcher, the coming months are likely to see increasing numbers of unimmunized children who are susceptible to measles.
The WHO has already estimated that by the end of October 2020, delayed vaccination campaigns in 26 countries had led to 94 million children missing scheduled measles vaccine doses.