Covid-19: What you need to know today

The World Bank said remittances to India will fall by 23%. The fall by almost a fourth is more bad news for India, whose economy, like that of most other countries, has been ravaged by Covid-19.

Remittances to India will fall by 23% to $64 billion, the World Bank said on Wednesday, calculating the impact of the coronavirus disease on a vital source of inflow into India and other countries. They grew by 5.5% to $83 billion in 2019. Globally, remittances are expected to decrease 20% in 2020. In low (per capita income less than $1,025) and middle income countries (including both lower middle income countries with per capita incomes between $1,026 and $3,995, and upper middle income countries with per capita incomes between $3,996 and $12,375) they are expected to decline by almost the same proportion, 19.7%.

Low and middle income countries (LMICs) receive most of the remittances. (Bloomberg)

Low and middle income countries (LMICs) receive most of the remittances. In 2019, these stood at around $554 billion of a total of around $710 billion (78%). This year that number will fall to $445 billion (out of a total of $568). The World Bank expects remittances to LMICs to grow 5.6% to around $470 in 2021, but with the trajectory of Covid-19 still unclear, all estimates are just that — estimates. Many countries will tighten their immigration laws in the wake of the pandemic — the US already has — and even those that don’t are unlikely to welcome foreign workers, at least, not until a vaccine is discovered and becomes easily available.

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At 15.16% of all remittances into low and middle income countries (India is a lower middle income country), and almost 12% of all global remittances, India is on top of the list of countries that receive money from workers abroad. At 3.36% of GDP, it’s not as high as it is in some countries, but the $83 billion it received in remittances last year was still higher than the $49 it is estimated to have attracted in foreign direct investment (according to an investment tracker by UNCTAD). According to the World Bank, in 2019, remittances became higher than FDI at an aggregate level for LMICs — highlighting just how important these inflows are.

The fall in remittances by almost a fourth is more bad news for India, whose economy, like that of most other countries, has been ravaged by the virus as well as by what is universally accepted as the only way to flatten the curve of infections (a lockdown, which significantly impacts economic activity).

Is the curve flattening? An optimistic reading of the number of daily cases recorded globally and in the US and the UK (among the worst-affected countries) would seem to suggest so. The number of daily cases in the US on April 22 was 29,973 according to worldometers.info. In the UK, it was 4,451. And across the world, there were 79,956 new cases on April 22. That number is still high, but it is definitely off the peaks seen in the past fortnight. The reason it doesn’t make sense to be optimistic about anything concerning Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is simply this — every time the curve seems to be flattening, the virus finds a new hot spot, or several, which it then proceeds to overrun.

Still, it makes sense to look closely at the numbers. By April 22, the number of Covid-19 infections were 2,639,025. Of this number, 184,263 people have died (which is a lot), and 722,150 have recovered. There are 1,732,612 active cases, but 97% of these (1,674,355) are mild. All data (and the prognosis) are from worldometers.info.

In India, the number of cases were 21,367 on April 22. Of this number, 683 people have died and 4,373 have recovered. The number of new cases in the seven days to April 22 (including April 22) were: 1067, 953, 1304, 1598, 1248, 1504, and 1363. All Indian data is from HT’s dashboard. Anecdotally (based on what health ministry officials tell us), very few of the infected people in India are on ventilator support. Most, they add, are asymptomatic, which, along with quarantine, lockdown and pandemic, is an early candidate for 2020’s word of the year.