• States General, IMF: "Five challenges for Italy, from tax reform to bureaucracy"
  • Gualtieri: "Down VAT? It is cyclical, let's see. The government's goal is to reduce labor costs"
  • Collapse of employment contracts, -239 thousand compared to the previous year
  • Visco: uncertainty forecasts, well-constructed plan needed. GDP 2020 around -20%
  • Fed: firm rates up to 2022, GDP 2020 - 6.5%

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June 24, 2020 Italy will pay the biggest price for the coronavirus pandemic, with a 12.8% drop in GDP in 2020, equal only to that of the Spanish economy. The estimate is contained in the update of the World Economic Outlook of the International Monetary Fund which cuts the forecast published in the April Report by 3.7%. In 2021, Italian economic activity will rebound instead of 6.3%, 1.5% more than what the Washington Institute expected in the spring. The trend in public finances is also worrying. According to the IMF, the ratio between deficit and GDP in our country will be 12.7% this year and 7% next year. The debt-to-GDP ratio will rise to 166.1% in 2020 and then drop to 161.9% in 2021.

Abrupt braking also for Germany, France, Spain and Great Britain in 2020. According to the update of the IMF estimates, the German locomotive will contract by 7.8% this year and then grow by 5.4% next year. The Fund expects GDP to decline by 12.5% ​​in 2020 and 7.3% growth in 2021 for France, while for Spain it is estimated -12.8% this year and 6.3% growth in 2021. Double-digit drop also for British GDP, which will drop by 10.2% in 2020 to rise by 6.3% in 2021.

US GDP estimate 2020 decreases to -8%
The US economy should contract by 8 % in 2020 before rebounding 4.5% the following year. This is what the International Monetary Fund claims in updating the World Economic Outlook. In April, the Fund predicted a 5.9% drop in GDP this year and a 4.7% growth in 2021.

Jobs, lost 300 million full-time jobs
The crisis triggered by the coronavirus is a "catastrophic hit" "on the world job market. This was stated by the IMF, stressing that "some countries (especially Europe) have managed to contain the fallout with effective short-term plans". The Fund therefore cites data from the World Labor Organization: the drop in hours worked in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 is equivalent to the loss of 130 million jobs. The drop in the second quarter is equivalent to 300 million jobs.

Progress in the fight against poverty at risk
The repercussions of the coronavirus epidemic on the economy risk canceling all the progress made in the fight against poverty in recent years and "significantly increase inequalities". The effects of the pandemic had "an acute negative impact particularly on the poor worldwide". The fraction of the world's population living in extreme poverty, that is, on less than $ 1.90 a day, recalls the IMF, had fallen below 10% in recent years from 35% in 1990. "This progress" , the Report warns, "is endangered by the crisis from Covid-19, with over 90% of emerging markets and developing economies recording a negative per capita income trend in 2020".