The economy of Malaysia in the year 2020 might shrink more than the initial forecast due to the tension of the curbs on movement for containing the spread of the coronavirus or COVID-19, the finance minister stated on Saturday.
Coronavirus crisis
Malaysia's central bank had forecast in April for growth in gross domestic product (GDP) of between -2 percent and 0.5 percent this year. "But that forecast was made after just two weeks of movement curbs. We're now more than five weeks in ... so our GDP could shrink even more," Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said in an interview with a local television channel.
The deadly virus outbreak has created a majors tie around the world claiming the lives of nearly 240,000 people and infecting over 3.3 million people globally. The WHO has described the outbreak as a pandemic and the US is the worst affected country followed by Spain and Italy.
(With agency inputs)
