China will be the lone major economy to grow this year, while developed economies will commence a slow recovery in 2021 without any likelihood of returning to pre-pandemic conditions before 2023, Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP said on Tuesday, reported the South China Morning Post.
The diversified miner’s forecast, which was delivered during its full-year earnings report, indicates it thinks China is likely to shoulder the bulk of global growth in the next several years. “While the outlook for 2021 remains uncertain, within the scenarios that we consider, our base case has the world economy rebounding solidly during the year,” BHP said in its outlook.
“There will, however, be considerable variation at the country level. Even with this rebound, our base case is for the world economy to be six per cent smaller than it would otherwise have been in the 2021 calendar year.
“We expect that China and the [members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] will return to their pre-Covid-19 trend growth rates from around 2023. Developing economies outside East Asia may take longer.”