IMF：低收入发展中国家可能面临“失去的十年”
（中英文来自IMF官网，相关权利归IMF所有）
新冠疫情：若无援手，低收入发展中国家可能面临“失去的十年”
作者：Daniel Gurara、Stefania Fabrizio和 Johannes Wiegand
2020年8月27日
新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）危机正波及全球，而低收入发展中国家（LIDC）在应对危机中尤为艰难。这些国家不仅遭受了外部冲击的重创，且还因疫情传播和防控措施导致了国内经济的严重萎缩。同时，很多低收入发展中国家的政府资源有限且制度薄弱，限制了它们支持经济的能力。
今年，低收入发展中国家的经济增长可能陷入停滞，而这些国家2019年的经济增速还曾达到5%。不仅如此，如果无法持续获得国际上的支持，疫情带来的永久性“创伤”可能损害其发展前景，加剧不平等问题，且可能使过去十年的减贫成果毁于一旦。
多重冲击造成重大损失
低收入发展中国家在新冠疫情危机爆发前就已经十分脆弱，例如，这些国家中有一半已经债台高筑。3月以来，多个罕见的外部冲击相互叠加，给低收入发展中国家造成重创，这包括实际出口急剧萎缩，出口（尤其是石油产品）价格下跌，资本和侨汇流入减少，旅游收入下降。
以侨汇为例，2019年59个低收入发展中国家中有30个国家的侨汇占GDP比重超过5%。今年4到5月，孟加拉的侨汇收入同比减少了18%，吉尔吉斯斯坦同比减少了39%。在一些国家，侨汇是很多贫穷家庭的主要收入来源，侨汇减少很可能造成了十分广泛的影响。
从国内影响看，虽然低收入发展中国家的疫情发展慢于世界其他国家，但其经济正遭受重大损失。很多低收入发展中国家迅速采取行动，以控制疫情传播。它们自3月中旬起（当时报告病例依然较少）就已采取了多项防控措施，包括减少国际旅行、学校停课、取消公共活动和限制集会。
人员物资流动是国内经济活动的一个替代指标，该指标不仅急剧下降，还随防控措施范围扩大而持续回落，这些措施包括关停工作场所、颁布居家令和限制国内出行等。4月底到5月初以来，防控措施逐步放松，人员物资流动有所恢复，但仍未回升至危机前水平。
在匮乏的资源下进行艰难权衡
大多数低收入发展中国家无法长期维持严格的防控措施，因为大量民众处于最低生活水平的边缘。这些国家的非正式部门规模庞大，制度能力薄弱，且贫困人口的登记不完整，因此政策很难惠及困难群体。此外，政府仅有有限的财政资源来提供支持。
近期针对20个非洲国家开展的调查显示，若封锁时间超过两周，超过70%的受访者将面临食物耗尽的风险。
面对这些制约条件，有关国家推出了短暂的防控措施，但出台措施的时点大大提前，从而实现了一个重要目标：使感染曲线平坦化，同时为加强卫生部门的应对能力争取了时间。很多低收入发展中国家采取了这一策略：虽然它们为经济提供的财政支持少于发达经济体或新兴市场，但卫生部门享有的额外专项支出占比更高。
由于广泛的防控措施难以长期维系，低收入发展中国家应该转向更具针对性的措施，包括保持社交距离和接触者追踪—— 越南和柬埔寨就是很好的例子。政策支持应重点关注老年人等最脆弱群体，同时减轻这场卫生危机的长期影响。
例如，正如近期多位知名人士联名向国际社会致函中所强调，保障教育至关重要，应避免本次疫情“产生辍学且机遇永久受损的‘新冠一代’”。
拥有必要基础设施的国家有时可以创新地利用技术。例如，为控制疫情传播，卢旺达正利用其数字金融基础设施劝阻民众使用现金。多哥借助选民注册数据库为脆弱群体提供援助。
十年成果面临威胁
尽管低收入发展中国家的政府已竭尽全力，但若缺乏更多的国际援助，它们恐无法避免长期受损。尤其令人担忧的是这些国家可能遭受长期“创伤”，即生产能力遭受永久性的损失。
这类“创伤”是先前疫情所遗留的影响，包括人员死亡，卫生教育状况恶化使未来收入下降，储蓄和资产损耗迫使企业关闭（尤其是缺少信贷渠道的小企业）、干扰生产且很难恢复，债务积压抑制私人部门贷款等。例如，2013年埃博拉疫情结束后，塞拉利昂至今仍未恢复至危机前的增长路径。
“创伤”将使低收入发展中国家的发展努力遭受严重挫折，包括抵消过去7到10年的减贫成果，加剧性别不公等不平等现象。其也使“可持续发展目标”（SDG）更难实现。
低收入发展中国家无力自行应对危机
国际社会的支持是确保低收入发展中国家有能力应对疫情并实现强劲复苏的关键。重点工作包括：（1）保证必需医疗物资的供应，包括未来研制出的药物和疫苗。（2）保障关键供应链，尤其是粮食和药品。（3）避免采取保护主义措施。（4）提供赠款和优惠贷款，确保发展中经济体能为关键性支出融资。（5）确保满足低收入发展中国家的国际流动性需求，这要求国际金融机构具备充足的资源。（6）根据需要实施债务调整和重组，以恢复债务可持续性。很多国家可能需要在二十国集团“暂停偿债倡议”以外获得更多债务减免。（7）持续关注联合国可持续发展目标，包括在危机消退后重新评估相关需求。
只有全世界克服新冠疫情及其社会经济影响，我们才能战胜疫情。国际社会紧急行动起来，能挽救低收入发展中国家民众的生命和生计。国际货币基金组织（IMF）正在做出自己的一份贡献，自4月以来已向42个低收入发展中国家提供了紧急融资。IMF随时准备提供更多的支持，帮助有关国家进行更长期的经济规划，以实现可持续的经济复苏。
本博客借鉴了 Rahul Giri 、 Saad Quayyum 和 Xin Tang 共同开展的工作，并得到了 Carine Meyimdjui 的协助。
COVID-19: Without Help, Low-Income Developing Countries Risk a Lost Decade
While the COVID-19 crisis is sending shockwaves around the globe, low-income developing countries (LIDCs) are in a particularly difficult position to respond. LIDCs have both been hit hard by external shocks and are suffering severe domestic contractions from the spread of the virus and the lockdown measures to contain it. At the same time, limited resources and weak institutions constrain the capacity of many LIDC governments to support their economies.
Growth in LIDCs is likely to come to a standstill this year, compared to growth of 5 percent in 2019. Further, absent a sustained international effort to support them, permanent scars are likely to harm development prospects, exacerbate inequality, and threaten to wipe out a decade of progress reducing poverty.
Multiple shocks take a heavy toll
LIDCs entered the COVID-19 crisis in an already vulnerable position—for example, half of them suffered high public debt levels. Since March, LIDCs have been hit by an exceptional confluence of external shocks: a sharp contraction in real exports, lower export prices, especially for oil, less capital and remittances inflows, and reduced tourism receipts.
Take remittances, for example, that exceeded 5 percent of GDP in 30 (out of 59) LIDCs in 2019. Between April and May, they fell by 18 percent in Bangladesh, and by 39 percent in the Kyrgyz Republic, compared to the previous year. The repercussions are likely to be felt widely where remittances are the main source of income for many poor families.
As for the domestic impact, while the pandemic has evolved more slowly in LIDCs than in other parts of the world, it is now inflicting a sizeable toll on economic activity. Many LIDCs acted swiftly to contain the spread. From mid-March, when reported infections were still low, they put in place containment measures including international travel controls, school closures, the cancelation of public events and gathering restrictions.
Mobility—a proxy for domestic economic activity—also declined sharply, and continued to retreat as measures were broadened to include workplace closures, stay-at-home orders, and internal movement restrictions. From late April/early May, containment measures have gradually loosened and mobility has recovered, but has yet to return to pre-crisis levels.
Managing difficult trade-offs with scarce resources
Most LIDCs cannot sustain strict containment measures for long as large segments of the population live at near subsistence levels. Large informal sectors, weak institutional capacity, and incomplete registries of the poor make it difficult to reach the needy. Further, governments have only limited fiscal resources to support them.
Recent surveys conducted across 20 African countries reveal that more than 70 percent of respondents risk running out of food during a lockdown that lasts more than two weeks.
Faced with such constraints, the short but sharp front-loading of containment fulfilled a critical purpose: it flattened the infection curve, while granting time to build up capacity in the health sector. Many LIDCs have followed this path: while they expended less fiscal support to their economies than advanced or emerging market economies, the share of additional spending dedicated to health has been higher.
As broad-based containment becomes difficult to sustain, LIDCs should transition to more targeted measures, including social distancing and contact tracing—Vietnam and Cambodia are good examples. Policy support should focus on supporting the most vulnerable, including the elderly, and on limiting the health crisis’s long-term fallout.
For example, protecting education is critical to ensure that the pandemic does not—as highlighted in a recent Letter to the International Community by a group of eminent persons—“create a COVID generation who loses out on schooling and whose opportunities are permanently damaged.”
Where the necessary infrastructure exists, technology can sometimes be leveraged in innovative ways. For example, to limit the spread of the virus, Rwanda is leveraging its digital finance infrastructure to discourage the use of cash. Togo employs the voter registration database to channel assistance to vulnerable groups.
A decade of progress under threat
Despite the best efforts of LIDC governments, lasting damage seems unavoidable in the absence of more international support. Long-term “scarring”—the permanent loss of productive capacity—is a particularly worrisome prospect.
Scarring has been the legacy of past pandemics: mortality; worse health and education outcomes that depress future earnings; the depletion of savings and assets that force firm closures—especially of small enterprises that lack access to credit—and cause irrecoverable production disruptions; and debt overhangs that depress lending to the private sector. For example, in the aftermath of the 2013 Ebola pandemic, Sierra Leone’s economy never recovered to its pre-crisis growth path.
Scarring would trigger severe setbacks to LIDCs’ development efforts, including undoing the gains in reducing poverty over the last 7 to 10 years, and exacerbating inequality, including gender inequality. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will thus be even more difficult to achieve.
LIDCs cannot make it alone
The support of the international community is key to enable LIDCs to tackle the pandemic and recover strongly. Priorities include: (1) guaranteeing essential health supplies, including cures and vaccines when they are discovered; (2) protecting critical supply chains, especially for food and medicines; (3) avoiding protectionist measures; (4) ensuring that developing economies can finance critical spending through grants and concessional financing; (5) ensuring that LIDCs’ international liquidity needs are met, which requires International Financial Institutions to be resourced adequately; (6) reprofiling and restructuring debt to restore sustainability where needed, which, in many cases, may require relief beyond the G20/Debt Service Suspension Initiative; and (7) keeping sight of the United Nations’ SDGs, including by reassessing needs when the crisis subsides.
The COVID-19 pandemic will be defeated only when it and its socioeconomic consequences are overcome everywhere. Urgent action by the international community can save lives and livelihoods in LIDCs. The International Monetary Fund is doing its share: among other things, the IMF has provided emergency financing to 42 LIDCs since April. It stands ready to provide more support and help design longer-term economic programs for a sustainable recovery.
This blog draws on joint work with Rahul Giri, Saad Quayyum, and Xin Tang, and has benefited from the assistance of Carine Meyimdjui.
