Global economic growth will turn “sharply negative” this year, with a “partial recovery” for 2021 only if the COVID-19 pandemic recedes in the second half 2020, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

“Just three months ago, we expected positive per capita income growth in over 160 of our member countries in 2020,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a curtain-raiser speech ahead of next week’s IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings.

“Today, that number has been turned on its head: we now project that over 170 countries will experience negative per capita income growth this year,” she said.

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Amid the “extraordinary uncertainty” about the depth and duration of the crisis, the world could anticipate the worst economic fallout since the 1930s Great Depression, the IMF chief warned.

“The bleak outlook applies to advanced and developing economies alike,” she said. “This crisis knows no boundaries. Everybody hurts.”

The IMF has $1 trillion in lending capacity and is placing it at the service of its members, Georgieva said.

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