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Political mismanagement in a crisis can be expensive, very expensive.
This is the impression given by the current economic forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Germany is getting the receipt for the sluggish vaccination progress.
The IMF experts have scaled back their growth forecasts.
For this year, the experts are only expecting economic growth of 3.5 percent.
That is 0.7 points less than they thought Europe's largest economy would grow in the autumn.
A correction of 0.7 percentage points may sound like little.
However, that corresponds to lost economic output of a good 23 billion euros - arithmetically 277 euros per German citizen.
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It is not the first time that the IMF has cut its forecasts for 2021.
In the October outlook, economists had to lower their forecast for Germany from 5.4 to 4.2 percent.
So now to 3.5 percent.
The IMF experts are not alone with the reduced forecast.
The average of the forecasts of various houses also locates the German GDP plus in 2021 at 3.5 percent, as a survey by the financial agency Bloomberg shows.
"Great divergence between countries"
The economists cite several reasons for their renewed pessimism, all of which have to do with the pandemic and its management.
On the one hand, there is the surge in virus infections in winter, which has led to nationwide lockdowns.
On the other hand, the occurrence of mutations makes the situation even more confusing.
Unlike in autumn, there are now several approved vaccines against Covid-19, but the production and distribution of the vaccines is proving to be a major problem and is now becoming a political bone of contention.
"There is a great divergence between the countries," says IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath, referring to the situation.
It is a race between vaccination progress and virus mutation, "and there is great uncertainty and great differences between the countries."
At the same time, the organization's experts warn of poorer financing conditions; in view of the high debt burden, higher interest rates and more restrictive fiscal policy could weigh on any recovery movement.
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It is striking which nations are given a rating in the IMF report.
Above all, these are European countries, in addition to Germany, for example, Italy and Spain.
For the boot state, the economists of the Monetary Fund have lowered the GDP outlook by 2.2 percentage points.
This year the Italian economy is likely to expand by just three percent.
The GDP forecast for Spain has been cut by 1.3 percentage points.
Great Britain is progressing much faster than the continent in vaccinating, but there is also an IMF downgrading for the island.
The experts now only expect the British to grow by 4.5 percent in 2021, which corresponds to a 1.4 percentage point cut in the forecast.
In the case of the kingdom, the very tough lockdown that was imposed because of the virus mutation is noticeable.
Huge shifts in the world economy
The situation outside of Europe is completely different.
For the USA, the IMF has raised its forecasts for 2021 by two percentage points.
This is where the announced economic stimulus package by the new President Joe Biden is making itself felt.
“Economically, the US will surpass its pre-Covid-19 level this year, long before the euro zone,” explains Gita Gopinath.
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And many countries in Asia can already declare Corona overcome economically this year.
For economies as diverse as Japan and India, the IMF augurs are more optimistic than they were a few months ago.
The forecasts have been raised by 0.8 and 2.7 percentage points compared to autumn.
The IMF report shows huge shifts within the world economy.
Not only are some regions being hit much harder by the pandemic than others, the economic recovery is also very different.
Some nations continue to decline, others combine a larger part of global prosperity.
There is some concern within the Washington Organization that many poorer nations will be thrown far behind.
Your catching-up process could be interrupted suddenly.
"More than 50 percent of the emerging markets are likely to fall behind in the period from 2020 to 2022 instead of catching up," the report said.
In more than 150 countries around the world, the standard of living this year will probably be below the level of 2019.
But the old world also seems to be the loser of the pandemic in many ways.
From today's perspective, there will probably be no talk of an economic boom in 2022 either.
Four major European economies are forecast not to reach their 2019 production levels until 2023, namely Italy, Spain, the UK and France.
Overall, the global economy is expected to grow by 5.5 percent in 2021.
The world owes the recovery mainly to the dynamism in the USA and Asia.
In an international comparison, Germany is in the middle.
By 2023, Europe's number one should have regained the pre-Corona level with a bang.
At least if the IMF doesn't have to cut its forecasts again.
How the German economy is getting through the Corona crisis
The German Institute for Economic Research has already lowered its forecast for the growth of the German economy significantly.
In an interview with WELT, Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, assesses the consequences of extending the lockdown.
Source: WELT / Dietmar Deffner