Hope for recovery but economic outlook still uncertain

For the first time since the pandemic began, there is now hope for a brighter future, with the global economy projected to gain momentum during the coming two years. Nevertheless, the outlook continues to be exceptionally uncertain, with both upside and downside scenarios.

The release of pent-up economic demand and accumulated savings may reinforce a rebound if vaccines become available faster and more widely, boosting global growth to around 5% in 2021. But confidence may be hit if problems arise with distribution or secondary effects of the vaccines and if governments fail to apply the lessons from the first wave of the pandemic. In this scenario, global growth in 2021 would be lowered by 2.75 percentage points.

See OECD Economic Outlook, December 2020