Some of the world’s richest economies have seen their biggest ever fall in real GDP, with an overall decrease of 9.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown.

A report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the UK was the hardest hit, experiencing a contraction in gross domestic product of 20.4 per cent.

“This is the largest drop ever recorded for the OECD area, significantly larger than the -2.3 percent recorded in the first quarter of 2009, at the height of the financial crisis,” the report said.

France, which had some of the most stringent lockdown conditions, was the second most impacted, with a GDP that fell by 13.8 percent compared with a contraction of 5.9 percent for the first quarter.

GDP also fell sharply in Italy, Canada and Germany in the second quarter 12.4 percent, 12 percent and 9.7 percent respectively compared with 5.4 percent, 2.1 percent and 2 percent in the previous quarter.

In the USA, where many states introduced stay-at-home measures in late March, GDP contracted slightly less at 9.5 percent, compared with 1.3 percent for the previous quarter, while in Japan, the decrease was 7.8 percent compared with 0.6 percent in Q1.

The OECD data showed that real GDP growth for the ‘Major Seven’ countries since the second quarter of 2018 until the third quarter of 2019 has ranged from -0.8 percent up to 0.8 percent. Japan, Germany, the UK and Italy experienced negative growth for one or more quarters in the same period.  Japan saw the greatest economic contraction during that time, of 0.8 percent in the third quarter of 2018.

France, Germany and Japan all experienced economic contractions, of -0.2 percent, -0.2 percent and

-1.8 percent respectively in the fourth quarter of 2019, with all of the Major Seven experiencing negative growth in the first quarter of 2020.

(Writing by Imogen Lillywhite; editing by Seban Scaria)

(imogen.lillywhite@refinitiv.com)

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