Finance & economics | Covid-10trn

What is the economic cost of covid-19?

The pandemic could amount to $10trn in forgone GDP over 2020-21

|HONG KONG

THE ECONOMIC toll of the covid-19 pandemic is incalculable. But let’s try anyway. A useful starting point is the semi-annual Global Economic Prospects report released this week by the World Bank. It calculates that the world economy probably shrank by 4.3% in 2020, a setback matched only by the Depression and the two world wars. But this dramatic figure still understates the cost. It measures the world economy’s fall from where it was before the pandemic, not from where it would have been had the virus not spread.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Covid-10trn”

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