World Bank forecasts 5.2% drop in global GDP for 2020

World Bank staff now anticipate the sharpest drop in global GDP per capita since 1945.

The Washington-based multilateral lender expects world economic output to shrink by 5.2% in 2020 and has warned that worse scenarios remain a possibility.

So-called advanced economies would take the brunt of the damage with an output drop of 7.0% while in emerging markets GDP was seen dropping by 2.5% - the latter marked the first outright decline since 1960.

In April, the International Monetary Fund had forecast a 3.0% drop in global GDP, a tad worse than the roughly 2.5% contraction experienced during the last financial crisis.

In parallel, Spain's central bank updated its forecasts for that Mediterranean country's rate of growth in 2020, projecting a drop of between 9.0% and 11.6% versus a previous range of 5.6-13.6%.

A "robust" rebound was anticipated in 2021 of between 7.7-9.1%.

Nonetheless, recovering the same level of activity as in 2020 would likely not occur until 2023, its economists forecast.

Furthermore, under a worst case scenario GDP might plummet by up to 15.1% in 2020 and recover by just 6.9% during the following year.