2. Reduction in Supply of Intermediate Inputs Production across countries has also become more integrated due to increased trade in parts and components, as firms outsource as a cost-lowering strategy. Therefore, another short-term effect of the spread of the coronavirus is the potential shortage of intermediate goods and raw materials due to supply disruptions in global production and supply chains, first starting with China but expanding as the virus spreads. Oxford Economics6predicts that global industrial production will contract by 2% for 2020. UNCTAD 7 also predicts that China’s supply of intermediate goods will reduce by 2% for 2020. Further, the National Bureau of Statistics of China has revealed that industrial production in China contracted by 13.5% between January and February, 2020. (See figure below). Approximately 20% of global trade in intermediate inputs for manufacturing originates from China. This can result in imported inflation as reduced supply is likely to lead to price increases, resulting in an increase in the cost of production for Guyanese firms, with other spillover effects on workers and consumers. This is of far greater concern than the impact on final consumer goods because approximately 78% of Guyana’s imports are intermediate consumption goods, that is, goods that are inputs into the production of other goods for domestic consumption and exports. If those intermediate goods are not available or prices are too high because of a shortage in supply, then production in Guyana will suffer with the attendant consequences of job loss and income loss. That is in addition to the physical disruption of local production as a result of the need to lockdown the country to protect people and workers from spreading the virus. The extent of the impact of reduced supply of intermediate inputs on Guyanese firms however, is dependent on how reliant they are on inputs from China and other countries more hard-hit by the virus. According to Baldwin and Tomiura (2020)8the hardest hit countries (China, USA, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Brazil) account for the majority of Global GDP, manufacturing and exports. Some of the countries, including China, the US and Canada are important trading partners of Guyana both as destination markets for final goods and as import markets for intermediate inputs and raw materials. (See table below). Collectively, with the inclusion of CARICOM, they account for over 70 percent of our GDP. The extent to which the global crisis hits those countries will cause the crisis to have an impact on our production (through contagion effects). Experts
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OxfordEconomics. Coronavirus Watch. Understand the Economic Impact of the Coronavirus. April 2020. Viewed at; http://blog.oxfordeconomics.com/coronavirus 7 UNCTAD. 2020. Global Trade Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic. Viewed at; https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditcinf2020d1.pdf 8 Baldwin, Richard and Eiichi Tomiura. Economics in the time of COVID-19. VOX CEPR Policy Portal. Viewed at; https://voxeu.org/content/economics-time-covid-19
March 1, 2020
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