The 2020 edition of Business Insights on Emerging Markets provides a private sector perspective on investment opportunities and challenges in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This publication brings together analysis and insights from the business meetings of the OECD Development Centre’s Emerging Markets Network (EMnet), interactions with the private sector and desk research, organised in three regional chapters. An opening chapter by Cornell University’s Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell’s S.C. Johnson College of Business complements this publication. At the time of publishing of this report, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is rapidly spreading around the world. OECD analysis indicates a severe impact on the global economy, whose growth prospects were weak but stabilising when the virus hit. Restrictions on the movement of people, goods, and services together with containment measures, factory and border closures have cut output and reduced demand sharply - first in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter: ‘China’) and then globally. Like the rest of the world, emerging markets are facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis, with potentially extreme economic and social consequences. This publication mostly cites figures from before the pandemic, however more recent figures have been added and a box has been inserted after the executive summary and ahead of every chapter to provide a preliminary impact assessment of the crisis.
