The global economy will contract the most since World War II this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing incomes and sending millions of people into poverty in emerging and developing nations, the World Bank said.
Global gross domestic product will probably shrink 5.2 percent in 2020, the Washington-based development organization said in its semiannual Global Economic Prospects report Monday.
That compares with a January projection for a 2.5 percent expansion, and would be the fourth-deepest recession of the past 150 years after 1914, 1930 to 1932 and 1945 to 1946, the World Bank said.