The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that Ukraine’s GDP will grow by 3.5% in 2021 in its World Economic Outlook for October.
This is a downgrade from the IMF’s April prediction that Ukraine’s GDP will grow by 4% this year after shrinking by 4.2% in 2020 due to the economic shock from the COVID-19 epidemic.
The Ukrainian economy is recovering slower than many other countries’, including neighboring Hungary, Romania, and Russia, according to the IMF. The world GDP is projected to grow by 5.9% this year.
The emergence of virulent new SARS-CoV-2 variants before all countries can reach a widespread vaccination level makes it hard to predict when the world will overcome the pandemic.
“Over half of the countries in the world—accounting for 35 percent of the global population—are not on track to achieve the 40 percent mark by the end of 2021,” the IMF reported, referring to the total percent of the population that is fully vaccinated.
The organization proposed for countries to take cost-effective steps to improve their vaccination rate, including vaccine donation, prioritizing vaccine deliveries, removing restrictions on export, and increasing production and distribution capabilities.
