A sustainable recovery?

For 2021, the OECD's outlook is for a global GDP growth of 5.8%, according to its May 31 review of expectations, and the outlook will need to be recalibrated for the end of the first half of the year.

There is some rejoicing partly because vaccination is progressing globally. So far, 3.253 billion people have been inoculated, according to WHO data.

It is true, more than half of the global population is yet to be immunised because there are countries that have not received a single dose... I find the lack of selfishness and the prevailing lack of solidarity regrettable.  Homo homini lupus.

Much of the economic recovery rests on vaccines, on management capacity and also on their effectiveness in the face of a number of SARS-CoV-2 variants that threaten to reproduce at a faster rate before more of the population is immunised.

And with so many questions, the main one is whether or not there will be the desired herd immunity, because some people simply do not want to take the vaccine, and the true efficacy of the immunisation and its duration over time is unknown.

Already, doctors are warning of the need for a third dose to strengthen the immunogenic capacity of the doses, especially in view of the mutations of the virus that are beginning to cause new concerns.

In the meantime, people are trying to get back to normality, at least in Europe, where summer plans once again include travel for a population like Europe's that is used to tourism outside its borders, primarily the whole month of August.

Tourism is the wheel of reactivation for many countries, the industry without chimneys has a very important relevance in the generation of wealth for a good part of the economies that are not endowed with energy, mining, metallurgical or gold resources in a considerable way.

It has always been mentioned what tourism in itself represents for Latin America, ignoring the fact that there are entire continents that survive thanks to it, and I am not only referring to Africa, but also to Europe.

Tourism is a much more significant activity than is appreciated within the European continent itself. A lot of cities on the old continent have for more than a year been enduring the pain of not having tourists; of not having income from those desirable foreign currencies that, in their absence, leave cities grey with hotels closed, hotels bankrupt, museums empty and many, many sub-sectors bankrupt.

Now people are starting to move around more, to travel again despite the risk; let's say that a sense of security has been created with the vaccines as if the pandemic were a nightmare that has been dispelled.

Another big question, with no reliable answer so far, has to do with the issue of whether the economic recovery will be sustainable or whether the V-shaped rebound will turn into another global recession in a couple of years.

In fact, the OECD itself estimates the time it will take to recover pre-pandemic GDP per capita levels and points to a group of countries as the most delayed in doing so: Argentina will delay beyond 2025; South Africa is expected to recover by the end of 2024, while Saudi Arabia will do so after 2023 and Mexico, a little after 2022, as will Spain. Only China and Turkey have emerged largely unscathed from the pandemic and most countries will recover their GDP per capita between 2021 and 2022.

It seems to me that sustaining growth over time will depend on a series of factors, not all of which are positive, starting with the fact that climate change is already playing against us; and there is also collateral damage from the pandemic in almost all economies without distinction: a sharp increase in indebtedness. From my perspective, both variables will condition the sustainability of the economic recovery over time, which could be just smoke and mirrors…