La pandemia de COVID-19 ha empujado los niveles de deuda hasta nuevos máximos. En comparación con finales de 2019, se proyecta que los coeficientes de endeudamiento promedio en 2021 aumenten un 20% del PIB en las economías avanzadas, un 10% del PIB en las economías de mercados emergentes y aproximadamente un 7% en los países de bajo ingreso. Estos incrementos se suman a unos niveles de deuda que ya son históricamente altos. Si bien muchas economías avanzadas todavía tienen capacidad de endeudamiento, los países de mercados emergentes y los de bajo ingreso afrontan limitaciones mucho más restrictivas de su capacidad de contraer nuevas deudas.

Desde el inicio, Uruguay se tomó muy seriamente la amenaza del COVID-19. Cuando se confirmaron los cuatro primeros casos importados (el 13 de marzo), el Gobierno (que había asumido hacía sólo dos semanas) anunció la emergencia sanitaria nacional y puso en práctica medidas como la cancelación de eventos públicos, cierre parcial de fronteras y la cuarentena obligatoria para los viajeros provenientes de países con altos niveles de infección.

There has been much discussion in recent months about how workers who transitioned to working from home—and those who were deemed “essential”—are less affected by the layoffs and job losses brought on by lockdowns than are workers in “social” jobs that require closer human interaction, like restaurant workers. However, our new IMF staff research suggests that this does not tell the full story.

Corruption, the abuse of public office for private gain, is about more than wasted money: it erodes the social contract and corrodes the government’s ability to help grow the economy in a way that benefits all citizens. Corruption was a problem before the crisis, but the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the importance of stronger governance for three reasons.

The severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global economic conditions has resulted in an unprecedented number of member countries seeking financial support from the IMF. As of July 13, 2020, 72 countries have already received financial assistance from the IMF’s emergency financing instruments since the onset of the pandemic, facilitated by the doubling of annual access limits under these facilities approved by the Executive Board on April 6. Further requests for assistance, the majority of which are likely to be met through the IMF’s regular lending instruments, are expected in the months ahead.

The Platform for Collaboration on Tax (PCT) – a joint initiative of the IMF, OECD, UN and the World Bank – published today its Progress Report 2020, which gives a snapshot of the world’s four leading multilateral organizations’ cooperation in the area of domestic resource mobilization, including in their responses to COVID-19.

Within the region, the Caribbean economies are suffering even more due to their high dependence on one of the most dramatically impacted sectors—tourism—which, for some, accounts for 50 to 90 percent of GDP and employment.

Given the scale of the crisis and unprecedented uncertainty, governments have had to also deploy fiscal measures to strengthen the health system, protect the most vulnerable and support employment and otherwise viable businesses.

This joint IMF-World Bank note provides a set of high-level recommendations that can guide national regulatory and supervisory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and offers an overview of measures taken across jurisdictions to date.

The pandemic has hit Saint Vincent and the Grenadines hard. Tourism receipts have dried up, as tourism arrivals have come to a complete halt. The economy is now projected to contract by 5.5 percent —7.8 percentage points below pre-COVID-19 projections. A drop in fiscal revenues, combined with additional direct health and social expenditures, will increase the fiscal deficit and financing needs. IMF support will help cover some of these needs and allow the government to ease the impact on the population.

As economies now look for paths to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, new evidence reaffirms that policies for more open and trade-integrated economies could significantly benefit domestic competition and ultimately may help lower costs for consumers in emerging and developing economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in countries ramping up spending and contingent spending to address urgent needs related to saving lives and livelihoods. To ensure the effectiveness of such spending, it is crucial to be mindful of vulnerabilities to misuse and corruption. Emergency spending responses have differed markedly across countries and ensuring the effectiveness of such spending require different specific approaches in each country. Yet there are some common lessons, particularly for countries in which institutional capacities are constrained and fiscal governance is weak—notably in public financial management (PFM) systems and fiscal transparency practices. Drawing on lessons from the 2014–16 Ebola crisis, this note identifies measures that could mitigate corruption vulnerabilities, with a particular focus on budget execution controls.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a Policy Tracker  which summarizes the key economic responses governments are taking to limit the human and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tracker includes 193 economies.

No podemos predecir cuándo se producirá una escasez de liquidez. Pero sabemos que cuando se congelan las redes mundiales de suministro de capital, un problema de liquidez de corto plazo puede transformarse con rapidez en un problema de solvencia más profundo y de mayor duración. Para tales casos, una línea de liquidez disponible cuando se la necesite puede ser una tabla de salvación.

El FMI respondió a esta necesidad mediante la creación, la semana pasada, de un nuevo servicio financiero, la Línea de Liquidez a Corto Plazo (LLCP), el primer nuevo instrumento de financiamiento del FMI que se crea en casi diez años. Como parte de su estrategia más amplia para responder a la crisis, este nuevo servicio financiero proporciona una línea de crédito fiable y renovable, sin condicionalidad ex post, a países miembros con fundamentos y marcos de política económica muy sólidos, es decir, los mismos criterios de habilitación que otro servicio del FMI, la llamada Línea de Crédito Flexible (LCF). La LLCP se ha concebido para hacer frente a una necesidad de balanza de pagos especial—potencial, moderados y de corto plazo—que se refleja en presiones sobre la cuenta de capital a raíz de shocks externos.