The global economic recovery from Covid-19 will rely heavily on the successful rollout of vaccines, the World Bank has warned, adding that any delay risks more than halving this year’s growth rate.
At best the world faces “a slow and challenging recovery”, the bank said.
The multilateral lender forecast on Tuesday that world GDP would grow by 4 per cent in 2021, a pace that would still leave economic activity 4.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic path by 2022. But this assumes rapid progress with vaccination campaigns in advanced economies and in major emerging and developing countries, reaching widespread coverage by the second half of 2021.