Draft Issues Paper: The IMF's Emergency Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented global public health and economic crisis, with a tragic loss of over 3 million lives around the world and over 140 million confirmed cases thus far. The ensuing economic fallout has also been severe, with global output falling by an estimated 3.3 percent in 2020. The IMF forecasts a 6 percent increase in global output in 2021 but the turnaround is uneven and uncertain, with many emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) facing slow recoveries and significant downside risks (IMF, 2021a). The pandemic has been a major setback to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and poverty is likely to have increased significantly for the first time in decades as low-income workers have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic (ILO, 2020; Sachs and others, 2020; Castaneda Aguilar and others, 2021; World Bank, 2021).