While there is no way to tell exactly what the economic damage from the global Covid-19 pandemic will be, there is widespread agreement among economists that it will have severe negative impacts on the global economy.
Economics professor from the North-West University’s (NWU’s) Business School, Prof Ravinder Rena, was recently the keynote speaker during two international webinars.
In June he led the International Professional Development webinar series on “Economy and business around the world: challenges and opportunities – seeking solutions during and after Covid-19”. This was organised by the College of Business at the University of Buraimi in the Sultanate of Oman.
Prof Rena took to the online podium again on 12 August for the international webinar on the “Impact of Covid-19 on global economy”, organised by the International Association for Academic and Corporate in India.
During these webinars Prof Rena provided a detailed account on the pandemic, comparing it to a bushfire - infecting thousands of people across the globe every day.
Looking back to the Spanish Flu during the early 1900’s, he highlighted that the disease infected more than 500 million people in the world out of which 50 million (10% of the infected cases), died.
“Even though the Covid-19 pandemic is not as dangerous as Spanish Flu – killing less than 1% so far, it has created a serious impact on the global economy in general and human lives in particular,” he said.
“The global economy has contracted from 3,4 to 2,4 %, and millions of people are now unemployed. The pandemic also creates a serious threat to the wellbeing of humanity with many of us experiencing trauma and living in fear.
“In the South African context this pandemic created havoc with over 570 000 people infected, approximately 12 000 killed, and about 3 million unemployed. To top it all, the South African mining, construction, manufacturing, food and tourism industries have suffered great losses during the last four months,” added Prof Rena.
Follow the links below to view the webinars:
https://youtu.be/J6HGxdRY-Jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q4j6IsuXng
Prof Ravinder Rena.
