Thaddeus Malesa, Senior Advisor, Economics & Research of the Financial Sector Office at Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) delves into the impact of global shut-ins, oil GDP, and how Qatar is well-equipped to weather the COVID-19 storm

The ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to fuel a global public health crisis on top of an economic recession. Recently, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said a large global contraction in the first half of this year was inevitable. The IMF’s April 2020 World Economic Outlook report projects global growth this year to contract by -3%, under the assumption that the pandemic and required containment peaks in the second quarter for most countries in the world and recedes in the second half of this year. This downgrade of 6.3 percentage points from January 2020’s forecast, a major revision over a very short period, makes the Great Lockdown the worst recession since the Great Depression.