Seizing the Opportunity for a Pro-Growth, Post-Pandemic World

Toward a brighter future

Using this moment for some of these difficult reforms means that the monetary and fiscal stimulus still flowing will serve as a springboard to a brighter and more sustainable future rather than a crutch to a weaker version of the pre-COVID-19 economy. Seizing the opportunity could deliver years of solid post-COVID-19 growth and progress in living standards. The IMF estimates that comprehensive growth-enhancing reforms cutting across product, labor, and financial markets could raise annual growth in GDP per capita by over one percentage point in emerging market and developing economies in the next decade. These countries would be able to double their speed of convergence to advanced economies’ living standards relative to the pre-pandemic years.

That’s where we’ve come from, but where are we headed? In the year ahead, as more vaccines roll off the production line, more people get jabbed, and more economies gradually reopen, policymakers need to engineer a fundamental shift from saving their economies from collapse, to strengthening their economies for the future with growth-oriented reforms.

It doesn’t all have to be done at once. Recovery from this crisis will take years for most countries. Inspiring the next generation to rebuild a brighter future is the primary challenge for this generation of policymakers. They should seize this challenge, daring to be bold as the current crisis reaches a crossroads. Pairing growth reforms with recovery spending will deliver the prosperity that we have promised our citizens, making our own fate in a post-COVID-19 world.

https://blogs.imf.org/2021/07/20/seizing-the-opportunity-for-a-pro-growth-post-pandemic-world/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Citation:  IMF