The global recovery continues but momentum has weakened, hobbled by the pandemic. Fuelled by the highly transmissible Delta variant, the recorded global Covid-19 death toll has risen close to 5.0 million and health risks abound, holding back a full return to normalcy. Pandemic outbreaks in critical

It is one year into the Covid-19 pandemic and the global community still confronts extreme social and economic strain as the human toll rises and millions remain unemployed. Yet, even with high uncertainty about the path of the pandemic, a way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly

The Covid-19 pandemic and the widespread lockdowns imposed in 2020 led to the worst peacetime global contraction since the Great Depression. The first half of 2020 saw record collapses in output and only a partial rebound in the second half as economies gradually reopened, supported by decisive fis

After ending last year with unexpectedly strong vaccine success and hope that the pandemic and economic distress it caused would recede, we woke up to the reality of new virus variants and the unpredictable, winding road that it can lead the world down. Something similar has happened with the di

In just three months since we, International Monetary Fund (IMF), released our last forecast in October, recorded Covid-19 deaths have doubled to over 2.0 million, as new waves have lifted infections past previous peaks in many countries. In these same three months, multiple vaccines have seen unex

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread with over 1.0 million lives tragically lost so far. Living with the novel coronavirus has been a challenge like no other, but the world is adapting. As a result of eased lockdowns and the rapid deployment of policy support at an unprecedented scale by centr

The Great Lockdown is expected to play out in three phases, first as countries enter the lockdown, then as they exit, and finally as they escape the lockdown when there is a medical solution to the pandemic. Many countries are now in the second phase, as they reopen, with early signs of recovery, b

In 1953, Milton Friedman published an essay called "The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates," arguing that they cushion an economy from internal and external shocks by bringing about just the right price changes required to keep the economy at full employment. But after almost half-a-century of floati