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It is too soon to know how the coronavirus will impact China’s economy and global growth, a spokesman for the International Monetary Fund said Thursday.
“We are not at this point in a position to put any hard numbers around this. It is just too early to do that,” Gerry Rice, the IMF spokesman told reporters.
The IMF is monitoring the disease on a real-time basis and might be prepared to provide concrete estimates by the time of the G-20 finance ministers meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Feb. 22-23, he said.
“I want to really emphasize how much uncertainty there is at the moment,” Rice said.
“The economic impact will depend very much on the behavior of the illness itself, how fast it spreads, who it affects, and how quickly the contagion will run its course,” he added.
To date, most of the impact is concentrated on China’s Hubei province, which accounts for 4.5% of China’s gross domestic product.
China has the fiscal space to boost spending to combat the disease if necessary, Rice said.
“The right priority is getting help to people who have been affected,” he said.
Stocks were down across the board Thursday on fears about the impact of the deadly virus. The S&P 500 index SPX, -0.78% was down 14.79 points to 3,258.
