South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic, which is still impacting South Asia, has temporarily brought the region to a near standstill. Governments proactively stabilized activity through monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and supportive financial regulation, but the situation is fragile amid weak buffers and exhausted...

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Main Author:	World Bank
Format:	Serial
Published:	Washington, DC: World Bank 2020
Subjects:	ECONOMIC GROWTH ECONOMIC POLICY ECONOMIC RISKS EXTERNAL BALANCE FISCAL TRENDS INFLATION INVESTMENT MACROECONOMIC POLICY TRADE POLICY CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT PANDEMIC RESPONSE INFORMALITY LABOR MARKET
Online Access:	https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/898231602225467182/south-asia-economic-focus-fall-2020-beaten-or-broken-informality-and-covid-19 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34517

id	okr-10986-34517
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-345172021-05-25T09:58:30Z South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19 World Bank ECONOMIC GROWTH ECONOMIC POLICY ECONOMIC RISKS EXTERNAL BALANCE FISCAL TRENDS INFLATION INVESTMENT MACROECONOMIC POLICY TRADE POLICY CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT PANDEMIC RESPONSE INFORMALITY LABOR MARKET The COVID-19 pandemic, which is still impacting South Asia, has temporarily brought the region to a near standstill. Governments proactively stabilized activity through monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and supportive financial regulation, but the situation is fragile amid weak buffers and exhausted policy tools. South Asia’s GDP is expected to contract 7.7 percent this year, by far the largest decline on record, but uncertainty around the forecast is substantial. The informal economy in South Asia has been hit hard. Many unorganized workers, self-employed people and microenterprises have experienced a large drop in earnings as the service sectors that were affected most by the lockdowns are dominated by informality. Informal workers and firms tend to have inadequate mechanisms for coping with short-term demand and supply interruptions due to limited savings and constrained access to finance. While the poor have suffered severely during the crisis, many informal workers in the middle of the income distribution have experienced the greatest drop in earnings. Most of them are not covered by social insurance. The crisis lays bare complicated structural problems in the informal sector that need to be addressed. 2020-09-25T17:19:14Z 2020-09-25T17:19:14Z 2020-10-08 Serial https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/898231602225467182/south-asia-economic-focus-fall-2020-beaten-or-broken-informality-and-covid-19 978-1-4648-1640-6 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34517 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank Washington, DC: World Bank Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Publication South Asia South Asia
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	ECONOMIC GROWTH ECONOMIC POLICY ECONOMIC RISKS EXTERNAL BALANCE FISCAL TRENDS INFLATION INVESTMENT MACROECONOMIC POLICY TRADE POLICY CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT PANDEMIC RESPONSE INFORMALITY LABOR MARKET
spellingShingle	ECONOMIC GROWTH ECONOMIC POLICY ECONOMIC RISKS EXTERNAL BALANCE FISCAL TRENDS INFLATION INVESTMENT MACROECONOMIC POLICY TRADE POLICY CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT PANDEMIC RESPONSE INFORMALITY LABOR MARKET World Bank South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19
geographic_facet	South Asia South Asia
description	The COVID-19 pandemic, which is still impacting South Asia, has temporarily brought the region to a near standstill. Governments proactively stabilized activity through monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and supportive financial regulation, but the situation is fragile amid weak buffers and exhausted policy tools. South Asia’s GDP is expected to contract 7.7 percent this year, by far the largest decline on record, but uncertainty around the forecast is substantial. The informal economy in South Asia has been hit hard. Many unorganized workers, self-employed people and microenterprises have experienced a large drop in earnings as the service sectors that were affected most by the lockdowns are dominated by informality. Informal workers and firms tend to have inadequate mechanisms for coping with short-term demand and supply interruptions due to limited savings and constrained access to finance. While the poor have suffered severely during the crisis, many informal workers in the middle of the income distribution have experienced the greatest drop in earnings. Most of them are not covered by social insurance. The crisis lays bare complicated structural problems in the informal sector that need to be addressed.
format	Serial
author	World Bank
author_facet	World Bank
author_sort	World Bank
title	South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19
title_short	South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19
title_full	South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19
title_fullStr	South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed	South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19
title_sort	south asia economic focus, fall 2020 : beaten or broken? informality and covid-19
publisher	Washington, DC: World Bank
publishDate	2020
url	https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/898231602225467182/south-asia-economic-focus-fall-2020-beaten-or-broken-informality-and-covid-19 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34517
_version_	1764481070486519808

South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2020 : Beaten or Broken? Informality and COVID-19

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