GENEVA — The
World Trade Organization on Thursday warned that
global disparities in coronavirus vaccine rates could impact worldwide economic
recovery.
اضافة اعلان
"World trade and output have recovered faster than expected since the
second half of 2020 after falling sharply during the first wave of the
pandemic," World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said while
presenting a semi-annual report on the state of world trade.
"The WTO's most recent forecast expects the volume of merchandise trade
to increase by 8 percent in 2021 and 4 percent in 2022," she said.
Okonjo-Iweala said "trade performance is diverging significantly across
regions, with unequal access to COVID-19 vaccines a major factor in the
disparities.”
"This is especially true for low-income countries, where barely over 1
percent of their populations has received even one dose," she said.
"Failure to ensure global access to vaccines poses a serious threat to
the global economy and to public health.”
The International Monetary Fund also sounded a similar warning on Tuesday,
saying "vaccine access has emerged as the principal fault line along which
the global recovery splits into two blocs.”
The WTO chief said that despite the value of global merchandise trade
shrinking by around 8 percent in 2020, trade in medical supplies increased by
16 percent and
personal protective equipment (PPE) by nearly 50 percent.
"However, some
pandemic-related trade restrictions do remain in place, and the challenge is to
ensure that they are indeed transparent and temporary," she said.
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