Not going viral: How Auckland bounces back from covid-19

• Levels 4 and 3 limits on business activity, designed to prevent the spread of covid-19, have led to a dramatic slowdown in economic activity.
• There are learnings from recent global events such as the GFC and the SARS outbreak, but the similarities are few because of the cause of this downturn in the case of the former, and the scale in the case of the latter.
• We expect the recovery to be relatively sharp although not as sharp as the decline, with obvious ongoing weakness in international tourism despite a likely travel agreement with “trusted nations”.
• One of the biggest challenges will be confidence to start spending and investing again, particularly in industries with an overseas orientation....

May 2020