Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has flagged that the IMF has projected Australia’s economic growth to fall by 6.7 per cent across 2020.
The fund forecast that the global economy will fall by 3.0 per cent over the same period.
By way of comparison, a fall of just 0.1 per cent was recorded at the height of the global financial crisis in 2009.
Despite the grim outlook, the Treasurer highlighted IMF’s expectation that Australia will rebound again in 2021, with growth of 6.1 per cent predicted.
This would see the nation’s economy rebound faster than that of the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
“Australia approaches this crisis from a position of economic strength,” Mr Frydenberg stated.
He said: “Our disciplined economic and budget management saw Standard & Poor’s last week reaffirm Australia’s AAA credit rating, noting that ‘while fiscal stimulus measures will soften the blow presented by the COVID-19 outbreak and weigh heavily on public finances in the immediate future, they won’t structurally weaken Australia’s fiscal position’.”
The Treasurer also flagged the IMF’s finding that the Reserve Bank of Australia had “responded quickly to worsening risk sentiment by injecting $90 billion into the financial system to support small and medium businesses”.
