Authors: Mamuka Tsikhelashvili and Mikheil Ukleba, Research Fellows at the Levan Mikeladze Diplomatic Training and Research Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia

July 2020

The pandemic inflicted a heavy damage on the entire world. Rapid decline in global Gross Domestic Product is well underway and the ongoing recession is deeper than all economic crises over the past 150 years. The International Monetary Fund’s world economic outlook for 2020 is even more negative: decline is projected at 4.9 percent compared to the April 2020 forecast of 3.0 percent. And the global economic recovery in 2021 is projected to be slower than previously forecast (5.4 percent instead of 5.8 percent). World economy lost a total of $12 trillion in 2020 and 2021 due to great uncertainty caused by COVID-19. The World Bank predicts the deepest recession since World War II. The World Bank’s optimistic forecast envisions a 5.2 percent economic contraction in 2020, while its pessimistic outlook predicts 8,0 percent decline. OECD says world economy is expected to shrink by 6.0 percent in 2020 and suggests 5.2 percent growth if COVID-19 is brought under control. Global economy will shrink by 7.6 percent in case of second pandemic wave hit in 2020, while economic growth will reach 2.8 percent in 2021.
The U.S. and other western countries accused the Chinese government of delaying notification about the novel coronavirus thus preventing them from taking effective measures in response to the pandemic.
While China cut off the city of Wuhan and the Hubei province from the rest of China it did not ban international flights to/from China, thus allowing the virus to spread across the world. Besides, claiming that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19, China initially tried to blame the outbreak on the U.S., which damaged China’s reputation.