Asia is bracing for recession as Singapore reports significant economic slowdown. History suggests that a global recession is to follow.
The Singaporean Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) has released advance data for the economy in Q1 of 2020. The city-state’s economy shrunk by 2.2% in the three months to March, driven by a sharp decline of more than 4% in construction, its lowest performance since 2009 when the global financial capital was in the throes of the recession.
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This news is worrying for every country across the globe. Singapore has historically had a strong economy; it is a highly-developed, free-market economy and is largely corruption free with lower levels of unemployment than many other successful, developed economies.
Singapore figures point to a recession
If Singapore is struggling, then it does not bode well for the rest of the world, and it’s newly released numbers provide a worrying glimpse in to what is now an almost certain future.
Prior to the data being made public, many experts and analysts were working under the assumption that hundreds of countries would experience a recession this year. This data has merely reinforced the idea and made it more likely that the global economy will experience a recession as bad as, if not worse than, the one that arose as a result of the financial crash in 2008-09.
This school of thought was reinforced further by the IMF’s statement, when the organization said it is forecasting a global recession “at least as severe” as the crisis in the late 2010s, and said that almost 80 countries have been in touch to request emergency financial aid.
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By GlobalDataLack of action from governments will be detrimental
The IMF is poised to help out in order to dampen the effect of the incoming recession. Unfortunately, due in part to many governments dragging their feet and wasting time, the World Health Organization has now said that “we squandered the first window of opportunity” and that it is more important than ever to do “the right thing to suppress and control this pandemic” before it becomes even more crippling to the global economy.
