The COVID-19 crisis is far from over, ANZ Chief Economist Richard Yetsenga says – but the parts of the global economy that really drive growth are starting to look a little brighter. And that’s good news.
Speaking on a call with ANZ customers, Yetsenga said as economies begin to ease restrictions put in place as the virus hit, the macroeconomic policy which came alongside the rules will start to get more traction.
“Then I think we'll start to see more focus on this stage of the cycle and what we've started to call untying the knot,” he said. “The recovery's not U-shaped or V-shaped or any other letter. It's likely to be quite a complicated, a drawn out process, at least with us into 2021 when there's still, fingers crossed, some hope for a vaccine to be developed.”
Yetsenga led a global call into the impact of the pandemic which also featured ANZ Senior China Economist Betty Wang, Head of Asia Research Khoon Goh, Head of Australian Economics David Plank, and New Zealand Senior Economist Elizabeth Kendall. You can hear edited highlights of the discussion in the podcast below.
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“From my perspective, I think the clear trend… is just a little glimmer of optimism,” Yetsenga said on the call. “We're really starting to calibrate the acute phase of this crisis, [and] finding out where the bottom is in some of these economies. We're talking about more countries removing restrictions over time.”
“[Infection data are] not showing any real appreciable decline, but certainly it's broken the previous increasing trend and it's basically now moving sideways.”
Listen to a podcast of the call above to find out more – including in-depth analysis of ANZ’s key markets.
Shane White is content manager at ANZ Institutional