E-Conclave corona series: Gita Gopinath lists 3 Covid-19 lessons for future

Describing the novel coronavirus-induced global economic crisis as unprecedented in nature and scale, Gita Gopinath, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) underlined three lessons for the world to keep in mind for future.

Gita Gopinath’s first prescription is for the countries to take healthcare systems more seriously. She said, “I will start by saying that countries that don’t have a very strong healthcare system should invest in that…That is needed regardless but this crisis has highlighted the importance of it.”

The coronavirus pandemic has strained even supposedly best healthcare systems in the world such as in countries like Italy, Germany, France and the US. All these countries have lost thousands people to Covid-19 and their healthcare systems were seen almost crumbling under the pressure from this pandemic.

Secondly, Gita Gopinath emphasised on strengthening social security of the vulnerable sections of society through a system which can deliver them cash quickly to deal with not only health emergency but also resultant economic crisis.

She said, “The second is the importance of having strong social safety nets that can be triggered automatically…in the sense that countries have strong unemployment insurance schemes, that can provide cash transfers much more quickly… those are the ones able to respond to needs much faster and I can see a world where everybody goes more towards this type of automatic transfer system.”

The third lesson that Gita Gopinath drew from the Covid-19 crisis is the need for closer cooperation in troubled times. She said, “This crisis has highlighted even more the need for working closely together and supporting each other through right amount of financing and right amount of technical assistance.”

Some analysts have highlighted that when the novel coronavirus outbreak took place in China, not too many countries took it seriously. They did not pool in their resources to ensure that the virus was confined to the region of its outbreak. This could have prevented novel coronavirus infection assume the scale that Covid-19 has attained.