Best and worst countries on COVID-19 response

[Tender Branson]

Our response has neither been really good, nor bad.

I'd rate it as "lean good".

Considering we are bordering Italy's most impacted regions, the thing could have swamped in and led to a much worse situation.

On the economy, we could have been more like Sweden - keeping the stores and restaurants open, to avoid a total economic collapse, which is now likely. Or at least, there will be a huge economic loss, high unemployment, mass bankruptcies among small businesses.

We are currently walking a tight rope between Italian/Spanish madness and "normality" ...

[Tender Branson]

Part of this should be the economic performance.  I looked over the current 2020 GDP projections from various financial firms as of the last couple of days (so the info takes into account latest information) and took the average of those projections by economy.  I did this for the larger economies in the world

USA               -2.1%
Eurozone       -4.2%
PRC                3.3%
Japan            -2.7%
UK                -2.9%
India              (not enough data)
Brazil             0.3%
Canada         -1.6%
ROK               0.4%
Russia            (not enough data)
Australia        -1.5%
Mexico          -1.9%
Indonesia       2.6%
Turkey           1.7%
Saudi Arabia   (not enough data)
Switzerland   -1.6%
ROC               0.9%

Russia I suspect will mostly have its economic impact being fairly minimal.   Saudi Arabia will be hit hard due to the oil price war.  India is a big unknown.  Modi shut the country down for 21 days which will hit the informal sector hard.  India GDP figures tend to be more biased in favor of the formal sector so as long as the 21 day shut down the economy can re-open I suspect the India impact will be fairly small with the informal sector hit more impacting next year's economic growth due to another hit on rural consumption.  

A couple days ago, Austria’s WIFO Institute has predicted a 2.5% recession for this year:

Press release (English, PDF)

[Tender Branson]

The slowdown here in new cases to just 3-5% per day is very encouraging, considering how strongly nearby Italy is ravaged.

Also, more importantly, deaths are not spiralling out of control here - which allows us to treat some patients from Italy and France.

If the public does their fair share too in the coming weeks, we could get this under control of some sorts and prevent out-of-control situations like in Italy, Spain or the US.

[Tender Branson]

Now that all the GDP projections from various financial houses are in for end of April I can produce an updated chart of 2020 average GDP projections when compared Fed 2020 average GDP projections for 2020.

                April 2020       Feb 2020
World          -3.1%              3.1%
USA            -4.8%              1.8%
Eurozone     -6.5%              1.0%
PRC              1.8%              5.5%
Japan          -3.9%              0.5%
UK              -5.9%              1.0%
India            0.4%              5.7%
Brazil          -2.9%              2.2%
Canada        -5.3%             1.5%
ROK            -0.4%              2.2%
Russia         -3.7%              1.8%
Australia      -3.5%              2.1%
Mexico         -5.3%             0.9%
Indonesia      1.8%             5.0%
Turkey         -2.1%             2.8%
Saudi Arabia-2.7%             2.3%
Switzerland  -3.7%             1.2%
ROC             0.1%              2.3%
Argentina    -5.1%             -1.6%
Sweden       -3.9%             1.1%
Poland         -3.1%             3.3%
Thailand      -4.2%             2.0%
Norway       -3.6%             1.8%
Philippines    0.8%             6.2%
Nigeria        -1.8%             2.3%
Vietnam       2.6%             6.7%

The volume of projection data for World, India, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Vietnam are a bit on the thin side.  I suspect given the oil price collapse the growth figures for Saudi Arabia and Nigeria will head down more from here.  The India drop surprises me as the India lockdown should have hit the informal sector more which are usually not picked up as much in official GDP figures.

The economies that will see the smallest drop relative to Feb 2020 projections would be ROC followed by ROK.  On the whole "colder" and more advanced economies are getting hit more.  The large Thailand fall seems to indicate their dependency on tourism was large than I would have expected.

The only economies that will see any real growth this year would be PRC (first in first out), Indonesia and Vietnam.  Indonesia and Vietnam has the advantage of being in warmer areas where the speed of the virus spread is reduced.  Indonesia also have the advantage of being a fairly large economy and less dependent on exports despite some dependency on the oil prices.

I am surprised that Sweden would see such a large reduction given their strategy of not locking down. I guess their export market in Eurozone which got hammered badly would obviously hit them.  Ditto for Mexico where if American catches a cold Mexico gets pneumonia so even without a large scale lockdown Mexico growth will be hit hard.  Mexico at least had the best oil price hedge setup of all the big oil producers and earned a bundle when oil prices crashed which mitigated some of the fiscal impact.

The WIFO now estimates the Austrian economy will decline by 5.2% this year.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-austria-economy/austrias-gdp-shrinks-27-in-first-quarter-largest-fall-since-financial-crisis-idUKKBN22C105

https://www.urdupoint.com/en/business/austrias-gdp-to-fall-by-525-over-covid-19-901657.html

[Tender Branson]

The elite club:

(honourable mention: Vietnam & Slovakia)

https://twitter.com/DavidHarrisAJC/status/1259442489834065920