COVID-19 will push Barbados deeper into recession and worse is likely if the coronavirus pandemic continues into 2021.
That is the latest forecast from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which sees the economy contracting by 7.6 per cent this year, a reversal of the 0.6 per cent growth it predicted three months ago.
The IMF also said unemployment could rise to 13.4 per cent, compared to last year’s 10.1 per cent rate.
But economist Professor Michael Howard envisioned a deeper fall in gross domestic product (GDP) and believed it could be “perhaps the worst we have seen” – ten per cent.
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