The world economic news through last week must have sent shockwaves across North and South Block where India’s ministries of finance, defence and external affairs — and the Prime Minister’s Office — are located. The post-pandemic world order is knocking on the doors.
On Friday, the European Union released the preliminary estimates of the Eurozone economies’ performance in the second quarter of 2020. The 19-member bloc’s GDP contracted by 12.1%. This followed Germany’s announcement Thursday of its largest drop in GDP (10.1%) since it began keeping quarterly records half a century ago.
Germany is Europe’s powerhouse and alone generates almost a quarter of the EU’s GDP. This is how a German commentator at Deutsche Welle surveys the gathering storms:
“Neither the stock market crash nor the oil price shock could achieve what a tiny virus has done. The fruits of 10 years of growth were wiped out within weeks.
“The German economy collapsed in March but the Federal Statistics Office has said that the full force of the crisis is only now being reflected in the numbers. A 10 percent decline in the second quarter. There has never been anything like it.