No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever been at war wrote American political commentator and author Thomas L. Friedman in 1996. Since then, of course, there have been plenty of instances of countries with McDonald’s warring, including Russia and Georgia. Though, one should not take Friedman’s phrase too literally. Rather he implies that the spread of McDonald's is a part of a worldwide phenomenon of countries integrating with the global economy, which, in turn, makes wars less likely.

The annual real GDP growth for 2019 amounted to 5.2%, while the real GDP growth rate reached 5.1% year-on-year for January 2020. Before taking into consideration the negative consequences of COVID-19 on the real GDP growth forecast, ISET-PI predicted 4.7% and 5.4% growth for the first and second quarters of 2020 respectively, based on data from January 2020.

The outbreak of the virus and the corresponding containment measures have started to severely affect the global economy. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its Interim Economic Outlook Report (2020) on March 2nd downgraded 2020 real GDP growth projections for almost every country. The largest reduction in growth projections is seen for China (-0.8 percentage points) with a worldwide real GDP growth rate expected to decline from 2.9% (November 2019 forecast) to 2.4%.

As the novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread around the world and has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, the next global economic recession is no longer an “if” or even a “when” event. Unfortunately, it is already upon us. In just the past few days.

GeoStat has published its rapid estimate of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2019. Their estimated growth stands at 5.3%, which is 0.7 percentage points above ISET-PI’s most recent forecast. The annual real GDP growth for 2019 amounted to 5.2%. The real GDP growth rate reached 5.1% year-on-year for January 2020.