Macroeconomic overview of the Covid-19 impact on the SEE Region

Abstract

The outbreak of pandemic COVID-19 across the globe with more than three million deadpeople has completely disrupted the, social, economic and financial structures of theworld. The rapid spread of COVID-19 pandemic in early March 2020 interrupted the growthmomentum, which was present in most of the Eastern European countries. Many countrieshave closed their borders, ordered businesses to close, instructed their populations toself-quarantine, and closed schools. In addition, stock markets around the world havefallen and tax revenue sources have collapsed. Because of the medical crisis,governments across the globe implemented monetary, fiscal and balance of paymentsmeasures to curb with the severe economic downturn. Today, one and a half year after thefirst case was registered in China, even with high uncertainty about the path of thepandemic, a way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly visible.In this paper, we prepare macroeconomic overview of the COVID – 19 impact on themacroeconomic developments with comparative analysis of the Eastern Europeancountries. Unfortunately, many of these countries are among the worst performers withvery high number of deaths per million people. We found serious impact of COVID-19 tothe economies in this group of countries with higher magnitude than the global financialcrisis of 2007-2009. The impact is different, attacking both supply and demand side of theeconomy and certain sectors has been more affected, especially micro, small, and mediumenterprises. We found that countries, which rely more on tourism sector, suffered morethan other countries.