IMF says pandemic may skew economic data and cause them to be less accurate

CNBC reports that key economic indicators may be skewed, and perhaps less accurate, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the International Monetary Fund. 

“Accurate and timely economic data are crucial for informing policy decisions, especially during a crisis. But the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the production of many key statistics,” the fund said in a blog post this week.

The coronavirus disease, formally known as Covid-19, first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December. It has since infected around 5.8 million people and killed more than 360,000 globally, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

“Without reliable data, policymakers cannot assess how badly the pandemic is hurting people and the economy, nor can they properly monitor the recovery,” read the post written by three members of the IMF’s statistics department.

The blog post comes at a time when many countries are releasing data on gross domestic product for the first three months of the year — when the coronavirus started to spread globally. GDP is a broad measure of the size of an economy and is widely watched indicator by governments, central banks and investors.