Tracking the $9 Trillion Global Fiscal Support to Fight COVID-19
IMF Blog, May 20, 2020
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- Tracking the $9 Trillion Global Fiscal Support to Fight COVID-19
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Bryn Battersby, Elif Ture, Raphael Lam
- Published: May 20, 2020
Overview and headline figures
- The total global fiscal support in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is about $9 trillion.
- This is $1 trillion more than estimates reported just over a month earlier.
- Breakdown of the $9 trillion:
- Direct budget support: $4.4 trillion.
- Additional public sector loans and equity injections, guarantees, and other quasi-fiscal operations (such as non-commercial activity of public corporations): $4.6 trillion.
- The upward revision largely reflects a second wave of government measures as the economic fallout from the pandemic proved more severe.
Notable country-level additions cited
- United States: approved an additional fiscal package of $483 billion on April 23.
- Japan: revised an initially conditional cash transfers program into a universal one, providing an additional $83 billion in support to households on April 20.
- France and Korea: introduced additional measures such as transfers to support households (no aggregate amounts provided in the source).
Distribution across country groups and scale
- The Group of Twenty (G20) advanced and emerging market economies account for $8 trillion of the global fiscal support.
- The total revenue and spending measures for G20 countries account for 4.5 percent of GDP on average.
- The IMF notes this 4.5 percent of GDP is larger than the measures taken during the global financial crisis.
Methodology notes and scope
- Estimates focus on discretionary revenue and spending measures.
- Deferral of taxes and social security contributions are excluded to the extent possible because they involve a temporary delay of revenue that would be collected in the future (sometimes within the same fiscal year).
- The estimates separately classify governments’ provision of loans and equity injections (which have an immediate effect on the government balance sheet) and guarantees (which expose governments to risks if guarantees are called).
Ongoing updates and related IMF products
- The IMF will continue providing timely updates of countries’ fiscal support in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The blog references the Fiscal Monitor for country-specific measures and the IMF policy tracker for broader policies, including fiscal, monetary and financial policies to fight the pandemic.
Source: IMF blog "Tracking the $9 Trillion Global Fiscal Support to Fight COVID-19", Bryn Battersby, Elif Ture, Raphael Lam, May 20, 2020.
Content in this bundle
- onlineannex11 - CHAPTER 1