Beijing, Feb.21--A study on impact of COVID-19 on economic had been released by Tsinghua University.
The Impact on China’s Economic Growth
Overall, the impact of COVID-19 will be less than its during the SARS, the paper offers four reasons to explain: firstly, the total number of indicators related to consumption will decline significantly in the short term, but decline in valued added will be not very serious; secondly, other than SARS, COVID-19 occurred in the first quarter, in which the economic activities were least throughout the year; thirdly, it’s possible for us to continue to carry out some economic activities during the period of epidemic prevention, with the development of logistics and transportation, e-commerce and network collaborative office in recent years; fourthly, the government’s response measures in economic operation significantly ahead than its to SARS.
Meanwhile, in the fight against COVID-19, it’s attracted attention to that the crucial thing is achieving the resumption of work safely and smoothly, which will be more important than any fiscal or monetary stimulus.
Based on the impact of SARS under the government’s aggressive response in 2003, the paper predicts the impact of COVID-19 on China’s economic growth, for suggesting the impact is short-term; and referring to the influence of SARS on added value growth of different industries in 2003, it also forecasts two impacts of COVID-19: it will bring less influence to service industry than in 2003; nevertheless, it will significantly restrain the growth of wholesale and retail consumption, for the government has been more active in encouraging residents to leave their homes less often.
The Challenge and Countermeasures to Resume Work Completely
Compared to other epidemics such as SARS, COVID-19 has the characteristics of strong infectivity and concealment and low mortality in healthy population. Thus, in an environment where the economy and society are basically and normally functioning, all sectors of the community should be prepared to fight against COVID-19 for the long term, instead of considering a full resumption of work after it’s completely eliminated.
The paper stresses four major challenges to completely resume work in particular situation: most of all, to strictly prevent the virus to rebound wide spread after the resumption of work; the second, to prevent local governments to value data of COVID-19 situation instead of returning to work; furthermore, ensuring critical enterprises to recover; the last but not least, to pacify the people’s worries about resumption of work.