The coronavirus crisis has triggered the worst global recession in nearly a century — and the pain is not over yet, even if there is no second wave of infections, an international economic report warned Wednesday.
Hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs, and the crisis is hitting the poor and young people the hardest, making inequalities worse, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in its latest analysis of global economic data.
"It is probably the most uncertain and dramatic outlook since the creation of the OECD," Secretary General Angel Gurria said. "We cannot make projections as as we normally do."
In the best-case scenario, if there is no second wave of infections, the agency forecast a global drop in economic output of six per cent this year, and a rise of 2.8 per cent next year.
If the coronavirus re-emerges later in the year, however, the global economy could shrink 7.6 per cent, the OECD said.
The outlook for Canada is even worse — a decline of at least eight per cent this year, followed by a bounceback of 3.9 per cent. But if and when the second wave comes, that could cause the damage to Canada to be as high as 9.4 per cent...
This was excerpted from the 10 June 2020 edition of CBC News.