Seizing the Opportunity for a Pro-Growth, Post-Pandemic World

  • In the year ahead, as more vaccines roll off the production line, more people get jabbed, and more economies gradually reopen, policymakers need to engineer a fundamental shift from saving their economies from collapse, to strengthening their economies for the future with growth-oriented reforms. 
  • Enhanced debt restructuring mechanisms should help resolve unviable firms expeditiously and channel investment to new ideas and companies. Stronger active labour market policies, including job-search monitoring and support, and retraining should help workers shift to more promising jobs in dynamic parts of the economy. 
  • Using this moment for some of these difficult reforms means that the monetary and fiscal stimulus still flowing will serve as a springboard to a brighter and more sustainable future rather than a crutch to a weaker version of the pre-COVID-19 economy. Seizing the opportunity could deliver years of solid post-COVID-19 growth and progress in living standards. 
  • The IMF estimates that comprehensive growth-enhancing reforms cutting across product, labour, and financial markets could raise annual growth in GDP per capita by over one percentage point in emerging market and developing economies in the next decade. These countries would be able to double their speed of convergence to advanced economies’ living standards relative to the pre-pandemic years.

(Source: IMF)