[EIU] Coronavirus outbreak: the economic and business implications

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) hosted a webinar on Coronavirus outbreak: the economic and business implications. The full recording is available to watch/ download here. The webinar breaks down four different scenarios for China’s economy amid Covid-19 outbreak. Below are key highlights:

• Data are still insufficient to fully understand the nature of the novel coronavirus, but The Economist Intelligence Unit is planning to revise its economic forecasts on the assumption that the public health emergency within China will come under control by end-March. We assign a 50% probability to this outcome.
• Under this core scenario, we provisionally plan to lower our forecast for China’s real GDP growth in 2020 to 5.4%, from 5.9% currently. Stimulus policies will cushion some of the economic disruption caused by the virus outbreak and the second half of the year should see a recovery in activity.
• Companies should prepare contingency plans for a range of scenarios, including the possibility that the virus will take longer to be brought under control or will even prove uncontainable. Such eventualities would have a long-term economic impact.

Source: http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=609020044&Country=China&topic=Economy

PDF available to download here.