Research and Analytics
Research and Analytics
A new IMF External Sector Report shows that overall current account deficits and surpluses in 2019 were just below 3 percent of world GDP, slightly less than a year earlier. The latest forecasts for 2020 imply only a further narrowing by some 0.3 percent of world GDP, a more modest decline than after the global financial crisis 10 years ago.
Both Democrats and Republicans directed much of their wrath at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Congressional trustbusters blasted him for buying up Instagram and WhatsApp. Acquiring competitors to neutralize them is a classic move in the monopoly playbook. But the lawmakers’ gripes with the company went far beyond typical antitrust concerns.
By Jim Anderson / World Bank The World Bank’s commitment to helping countries control corruption dates to 1996 when then President James Wolfensohn made his “cancer of corruption” speech. It was the first time the issue was given such prominence by a World Bank President and put squarely on the agenda of the institution. A […]
Corruption, the abuse of public office for private gain, is about more than wasted money: it erodes the social contract and corrodes the government’s ability to help grow the economy in a way that benefits all citizens. ut the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the importance of stronger governance for three reasons.
The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to roll back gains in women’s economic opportunities, widening gender gaps that persist despite 30 years of progress.
Faced with an unprecedented shock of collapsing global demand and commodity prices, capital outflows, major supply chain disruptions and a generalized drop in global trade, many emerging markets and developing economies’ (EMDEs) currencies have weakened sharply. Will these currency movements support the recovery of these economies?
The amount remitted by migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has grown tenfold in two decades, from $4.8 billion in 2000 to $48 billion in 2018. This reflects a steady increase in the number of people who decided to move in search of a better life: from 21.6 million in 2000, the number of migrants from Africa grew to 36.3 million in 2017.
When G20 finance ministers and central bank governors last met in April, the world was in the midst of the Great Lockdown forced by the outbreak of COVID-19. As they meet virtually this week, many countries are gradually reopening, even as the pandemic remains with us. Clearly, we have entered a new phase of the crisis—one that will require further policy agility and action to secure a durable and shared recovery.
By 2021, it is of high expectation that the world will return to normalcy, and economies around the world should recover from the adverse effect of coronavirus spread. However, emerging markets may continue to wallow in economic crisis as contemporary issues like weak GDP growth rate, unemployment rate, high debt profile, income inequalities, among others, remain in the picture, most of which have been worsened by the global pandemic effects.
It is no doubt that the commercial real estate is the hardest hit of all in the property sector during this pandemic. The hotels, retail space, convention centres were all shut down, except for the exempted essential spaces. As the economy begins to open worldwide without a vaccine to cure the virus yet, the impact of Covid-19 has made work-from-home (WFH) more attractive out of necessity.
