Only Japan, Sudan and Zambia will borrow more than Spain this year

• Covid The IMF improves its forecasts with a single exception: Spain

The coronavirus has not only cost Spain the lives of 33,204 people, according to the

kept by Johns Hopkins University since the pandemic broke out.

It has also ruined the country.

Here are some of the figures, according to statistics from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published yesterday and today.

The crisis will cause the Spanish economy to produce

in 2020

.

It is as if the Basque Country, Galicia and Murcia had ceased to exist.

Furthermore, we will not recover the level of production -the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP- that we had on December 31st until 2023: if it is not a requested decade, as they say in Latin America to refer to the 80s, it is at least a five-year lost.

If that number sounds very abstract, here is another one that is perhaps more clarifying: if the national economy is divided among the entire population - from newborn babies to the elderly - the

of the

that corresponds to

.

The average citizen will not return to the level of wealth of 2019 until the year 2024. Progress is slower than that of GDP because the population, although little, is growing.

Employment is another tragedy.

In 2020 there will be 964,000 fewer people working than in 2019.

, because the IMF's statistical projections end in 2025, and in That year there will still be more unemployment than there was in 2019.

To alleviate this catastrophe, aggravated by the collapse of tax collection because the economy is in a comatose state, Public Administrations will have to

.

That means, again, 3,308 euros per person from 0 to 100 years old.

This year's deficit is going to be greater than 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 combined.

These figures are provisional and are conditioned by an enormous degree of uncertainty.

But no one doubts the incredible blow that Covid-19 has meant for Spain.

An example: as the FMI

report

, published today, points out, increasing the number of patients that can be treated in the Intensive Care Units (ICU) in Spain by 20% would cost between 35,770 and 59,618 million euros.

That's double the entire Defense Budget.

This is how

Spain's

, which was among the lowest of the large industrialized economies, this year came to be very close to the average for that group.

With

, Spain is only behind Japan (14.2%), Great Britain (16.5%), Canada (19.9%), and the United States (18.7 %).

The latter country is, however, a case apart: the US has the dollar as its currency, which in practice is the world currency, which gives it, at least in theory, a virtually unlimited borrowing capacity.

But the deficit is only the most benevolent part of the IMF forecasts, which, above all, were

and the closure of Madrid, and which are based on the assumption that in 2021 the pandemic will to be controlled, and the activity restriction measures totally lifted.

The Fund

promised by the European Union between 2021 and 2024.

Generalized debt

Because the truly spectacular part is the debt.

If in December 2019 each Spaniard (once again, from newborn children to retirees)

average of 25,575 euros, now they would have 28,878.

It is

which adds to the fall in national income per capita by 5,361 euros.

If you leave that comparison aside and look at the absolute figures, the picture is just as terrifying.

The

estimates that the

of Spain will grow this year the equivalent of 27.5%, and will go from 95.5% to 123% of GDP.

In the developed world, only Japan has a worse result, with an increase of 28.2%, accumulating a debt of 288.2% of GDP.

But there is a considerable difference between the third world economy and the Spanish one: Japan has a huge savings rate that allows it to finance its chronic imbalances without problems without having to resort to foreign capital.

Among the developing countries, there are two that

Spain: Sudan and Zambia.

The first is almost a failed state, which is recovering from a series of civil wars and from the revolution and coup that overthrew dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019;

Zambia has suffered an economic collapse due to the shutdown of the Chinese economy, to which it destined most of its copper and cobalt exports.

Help and recommendations

Spain no.

For this reason, the aid received from the European Union is of paramount importance.

But not enough.

Even with its forecasts of the end of Covid-19, the IMF does not foresee a firm reactivation of the Spanish economy.

That means less tax revenue and more state spending.

Thus, debt in relation to GDP will continue to grow in 2021, and will only show a gradual reduction from that year on.

All in all, a debt of 120% of GDP is 20% higher than the world debt, estimated by the Fund at 100%.

And it is the consequence of a very timid fiscal consolidation after the end of the euro crisis in 2013. A fiscal consolidation that, in fact, was abandoned in 2019. This is how a debt accumulated that, when the coronavirus hit Spain, it had already cut the Administration's room for maneuver.

For the moment, the Fund advises "to avoid a premature withdrawal of fiscal support."

In other words

.

The opposite would aggravate the crisis even more.

But, at some point, when the recovery begins, the Government of Spain, like those of the majority of the EU - and the US if it did not have the dollar - will have to carry out a tough fiscal adjustment.

An adjustment that the Spanish will make by being poorer and more indebted.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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• Galicia

• Unemployment

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