KUALA LUMPUR: The coronavirus crisis is crushing global economic growth, according to Fitch Ratings in its latest quarterly "Global Economic Outlook” (GEO) published today. The firm has nearly halved its baseline global growth forecast for 2020 to just 1.3 per cent from 2.5 per cent in the December 2019 GEO. The revision leaves 2020 global GDP US$850 billion lower than in the previous forecast. “But we could very easily see an outright decline in global GDP this year if more pervasive lockdown measures have to be rolled out across all the G7 economies. “We forecast Italian GDP to fall by teo per cent this year and Spanish GDP by almost one per cent,” it added.

Source: New Strait Times March 20, 2020 03:56 UTC