There are the obvious answers: the absence of robust health systems, the lack of public and private resources to combat the disease, and the prevalence of informal jobs that make it very difficult to opt to stay at home and not work. Beyond these, the MAPFRE Economics team goes into great detail in its latest Outlook report on the financial vulnerabilities that make many countries especially helpless when faced with this situation.
The emerging markets that were already at high risk of sovereign external debt problems at the end of 2019 currently have an unsustainable debt burden. Total debt is estimated at more than 220 percent of the GDP of emerging markets, with private debt close to three quarters of this figure, mostly due to the expansion of private enterprise leverage.
Access to the full article and report (the report is only available in Spanish)
