How Covid19 resets the world economy

By Bayo Ogunmupe Many things will change forever after the Covid19 pandemic. As I see it, the worst of the pandemic is yet to come and the world has reached a defining moment. Which is why, in its aftermath, we must get the reset of the world economy right. The challenges are greater than previously imagined. And we must double our capacity to reset than we previously dared to hope. This is a report of the launch of Covid19: The Great Reset, the new book by the Founder and Executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret. It is on the Corona virus crisis and its impact on the world economy. To date only a few countries are effectively containing the virus, while in a majority of nations, Covid19 is either raging or resurfacing with local outbreaks. Already, in barely six months, the pandemic has plunged our world into chaos, in its entirety, bringing each of us individually into the most challenging times the First World War. The world will be dealing with its fallout for years, changing many things forever. It has wrought economic disruption and will continue to do so. It has created risk and volatility on many fronts, political, social, geopolitical-while exacerbating deep concerns about the environment, extending the pernicious reach of technology into our lives. No industry or business will be spared from the impact of these changes. Many companies risk disappearance and millions of industries face an uncertain future; only a few will thrive. For many individuals, life as they have always known it is unravelling at alarming speed. These acute crises favour introspection and foster transformation. The fault lines of today's world, notably- social divides, injustice,absence of cooperation, failure of national and global governance, leadership failure and the degradation of national assets-lie exposed, as never before with many feeling the time for reinvention may have dawned. A new world would emerge, the contours of which it is incumbent on us to re-imagine and re-draw. The sudden and violent nature of what coronavirus pandemic is inflicting makes the scale of this challenge overwhelming. This impression is due in no small measure to the fact that in today's interdependent and hyper-connected world, risks amplify each other. Individual risks or issues could create ricochet effects by provoking others like unemployment, fuelling social unrest, penury and triggering involuntary mass migration like Africans migrated via the Sahara and by boat over the mediterranean sea. These challenges play out as complex adaptive systems which share a fundamental attribute: being susceptible to matters cascading out of control and in so doing producing extreme consequences that often come as a surprise, for which we are ill prepared. Covid19 has already given us a foretaste of this. To a considerable extent, the sharp and dramatic rise in unemployment, the global wave of social unrest unleashed by the Black Lives Matter protests and the growing fracture between China and the united States wouldn't have taken place without the pandemic. At the very least, they were exacerbated by it. The occurrence and severity of these fault lines mean that we are now at the crossroads. The potential for change is unlimited, bound only by our imagination. Nations could be poised to become either more equitable or the opposite, geared towards more solidarity or greater individualism; favouring the interests of the few or looking for the needs of the many. Then, when the economies recover, they could be characterized by greater inclusivity but better attuned to global commonwealth or they could simply return to business as usual, which the pandemic revealed as untenable status quo. However, with enough collective will, we should take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to reset the world economy by making it more equitable, resilient as we emerge onto the other side of this crisis. The immediate post crisis period offers the window to rebuild by not wasting the $10 trillion governments around the world are investing to alleviate the effects of the pandemic. A recent policy paper to which the World Economic Forum contributed estimates that building a positive economy could be more than $10 trillion by 2030. In the short term, deploying about $250 billion of stimulus funding could generate about 37 million positive jobs in a cost effective manner. Indeed, resetting the environment should be seen as an investment that will generate employment opportunities. We must get the reset of the world economy right by starting now. The challenges before the world hold dire consequences, perhaps more than imagined. But our capacity to reset, is also greater than we can dare to hope. Let the Federal Government cooperate with the World Economic Forum for the reform of the Nigerian economy.