The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday it expects the global economy to decline 4.9 percent from the previous year, raising its April estimate by 1.9 points to reflect the worsening economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
With the pandemic triggering the worst global recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s, the IMF projected in an update to its World Economic Outlook for 2020 that Japan's economy will slump 5.8 percent, 0.6 point more than earlier forecast and sharper than in 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis.
The United States, one of the nations hardest hit by the virus first detected in China late last year, will see its economy shrink 8.0 percent, 2.1 points more than the earlier estimate and its worst contraction since 1946.