"In Angola, economic activity is expected to continue to fall for the fifth year, with GDP falling 4 percent in 2020, or 2.6 percentage points worse than estimated in April," reads the update of the Economic Forecasts for sub-Saharan Africa, released this Monday in Washington.
The deterioration in estimates "reflects the decline in oil production and prices, worsening credit conditions and the decline in domestic business activity," analysts add, noting that "the strength of oil prices and political support measures should help the economy recover to 3.2 percent growth in 2021.
On a global level, the IMF has worsened the growth forecast for sub-Saharan Africa, anticipating a 3.2 per cent recession, throwing nearly 40 million people into extreme poverty and nullifying ten years of development.
"The regional economy is expected to contract by 3.2 percent, which is 1.6 percentage points worse than projected in April, and shows a reduction in the growth forecast in 37 of the 45 economies, and in nominal terms the region's GDP will be 243 billion dollars lower than projected in October 2019," reads the report on the Fund's new forecasts.
The update shows the severity of the covid-19 pandemic and assumes that the situation is worse and the recovery will be slower than IMF analysts had anticipated in April, when they estimated negative economic growth at 1.6 per cent, already the deepest in recent decades.
The number of deaths in Africa due to covid-19 has risen to 9657, plus 173 in the last 24 hours, in more than 382,000 cases, according to the most recent data on the pandemic on the continent.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 500,000 lives and infected almost 10.1 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
