[ad_1]
BERLIN, Nov. 29 (AP) — The time has come for China to emerge from a massive lockdown and take a more targeted approach to COVID-19, the head of the International Monetary Fund said days after widespread protests erupted. The change would ease the impact on a world economy already struggling with high inflation, energy crises and food supply disruptions.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urged a “recalibration” of China’s hard-line “zero COVID” approach aimed at isolating every single case “precisely because it affects people and the economy. ”
Read also | An American bat species ravaged by the fungus is now listed as endangered.
Georgieva made the comments in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, in which she also warned that it was too soon for the Fed to back away from raising interest rates and held out hope for an energy crisis sparked by Russia’s civil war. Ukraine will accelerate the push for renewable energy in Europe.
She also called rising hunger in developing countries “the world’s most important solvable problem”.
Read also | Tesla car crashes again in China; Taizhou Model Y jumps lights and crashes, killing two
In China, protests erupted in several mainland cities and Hong Kong over the weekend in the largest public dissent in decades. Authorities have loosened some controls, but there is no sign of abandoning their larger strategy that has confined millions of people to their homes for months at a time.
“We see the importance of getting out of massive lockdowns, very targeted in the restrictions,” Georgieva said in Berlin on Tuesday. “So this positioning can contain COVID without significant economic costs.” Spread.”
Georgieva also urged China to study its vaccination policy and focus on vaccinating the “most vulnerable”.
Low vaccination rates among the elderly have been a major reason for Beijing’s lockdown measures, while the emergence of more contagious variants has put increasing pressure on efforts to prevent any spread.
Lockdowns have slowed everything from travel to retail traffic to car sales in the world’s second-largest economy. Georgieva urged it to “adjust China’s overall approach to assessing supply chain operations, with a focus on its spillover effects on the rest of the world”.
The Washington-based International Monetary Fund expects China’s economy to grow just 3.2 percent this year, below the global average for the year, a rarity.
The Communist Party has taken steps in the direction Georgieva suggested, instead isolating infected buildings or neighborhoods rather than entire cities, and making other changes said to reduce human and economic costs.
But a surge in infections since October has prompted local authorities, facing pressure from higher-ups, to impose quarantines and other restrictions that residents say are too extreme.
Asked about criticism of the crackdown on the protests, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry defended Beijing’s anti-virus strategy and said the legal rights of the public were protected by law.
Zhao Lijian said the government was trying to “maximize the protection of people’s lives and health while minimizing the impact of COVID on social and economic development”.
While China’s policies have ripple effects around the world, Georgieva said the biggest risk to the global economy is high inflation, which would require central banks to raise interest rates, making credit more expensive for consumers and businesses.
Beyond that, governments need to take care of the most vulnerable without overspending to undercut the central bank’s efforts.
“Policymakers face very difficult times in the year ahead,” she said. “They have to be disciplined in fighting inflation. Why? Because inflation destroys the foundations of growth and hurts the poor the most.”
Asked whether the Fed should pause rate hikes, which are strengthening the dollar and putting pressure on poorer countries, Georgieva said “the Fed has no choice but to stay the course” until inflation rises. Significantly decreased.
“They owe the U.S. economy, they owe the world economy, because what happens in the U.S. also has spillover effects on the rest of the world if inflation is not controlled,” said the IMF managing director in Bulgaria.
Inflation figures in the U.S. and Europe are still too high, and “the data at this point say: it’s too early to back off,” Georgieva said.
She warned that international tensions between China and the West, and between Russia and the West, could limit trade and its beneficial effects on economic growth and prosperity. She added that while there were fears that supply chains would be disrupted by the pandemic, “we have to work harder to find a way to counter these protectionist instincts” while being honest about supply issues.
Georgieva said the world was already seeing signs of rising hunger before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted food supplies to Africa and the Middle East. Increased investment in resilient farming and support for small farmers, as well as efforts to reduce food waste, will be part of the solution, she said.
“We have to admit that in the wealthiest societies, in wealthier households, we are wasting food every day, even if the amount is enough to feed the rest of the world,” she said. “Hunger is the world’s most important solvable problem.”
However, the number of hungry people has been increasing in recent years.
The world needs “a holistic approach to focus on food security, reducing waste, increasing productivity, and most importantly, more attention to small-scale farming, where a great deal of people’s livelihoods, especially in developing countries like this one, will Disappearance is a long way from finally solving this solvable problem,” Georgieva said.
The war in Russia has also created an energy crisis as Western allies back war-torn Ukraine and Moscow cut off much of its gas supplies to Europe. The resulting high energy prices create an opportunity to “accelerate the transition to low-carbon energy supply” by encouraging green investment. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
[ad_2]
Source link