The pandemic hit the manufacturing sector harder than during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, resulting in a drop in production of 6.8 per cent in 2020. The share of manufacturing value added (MVA) in global GDP fell - from 2019 to 2020 – from 16.6 per cent to 16.0 per cent. Across 49 countries with available data, manufacturing employment declined by an average of 5.6 per cent in the second quarter of 2020 and 2.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2020, relative to the same periods in 2019. Losses in working hours were even greater, at 11.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2020 and 4.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2020.

Manufacturing in LDCs is projected to have grown by a negligible 1.9 per cent in 2020 compared with 8.7 per cent in 2019. The share of MVA in these countries’ total GDP grew from 10.1 per cent in 2010 to 12.8 per cent in 2020 – far too slowly to reach the target of doubling that share by 2030. On a per capita basis, MVA was only $136 in LDCs in 2020, compared with $4,296 in Europe and Northern America.

The year 2020 was catastrophic for air travel demand. Air passengers dropped from 4.5 billion globally in 2019 to 1.8 billion in 2020, a 60 per cent decline. As a result, jobs supported by the air transport industry fell by 52.5 per cent over the course of 2020 – from 87.7 million to 41.7 million. Airline financial losses are projected at $371 billion in 2020, with an extra $115 billion and $13 billion in losses for airports and air navigation services providers, respectively.

A constantly changing list of open- and closed-destination countries has added a level of uncertainty. Air transport is not projected to get back to pre-pandemic levels until 2024. Governments should coordinate and do what they can to bolster the air transport industry to restore lost jobs and get the global economy back on track.

The structural transition within manufacturing is best reflected in the shift towards more technologically complex products. Medium- and high-tech products dominate manufacturing in industrialized economies. In 2018, the share of medium- and high-tech manufacturing was 49.0 per cent in developed regions and 41.4 per cent in developing regions, compared with 8.9 per cent in LDCs.

In the first half of 2020, world manufacturing suffered a severe slump triggered by global lockdowns. However, by the third and fourth quarters of that year, most economies showed signs of recovery, led mainly by medium- and high-tech manufacturing. During the fourth quarter of 2020, these industries registered growth of nearly 4 per cent compared with the same period in 2019. This growth was fuelled by the rise in demand for computer electronics due to a global shift towards working from home, remote-learning and e-commerce. Global manufacturing of low-tech products saw negative growth in the last quarter of 2020 (-1.8 per cent).

Small-scale industries have been severely affected by the pandemic, and many continue to face existential challenges. According to establishment-level surveys conducted from 2006 to 2020, almost one in three small industrial enterprises benefit from a loan or line of credit. Access to credit remains uneven across countries and regions of the world. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa and LDCs suffer the most from a lack of credit: approximately one in six small-scale industries in these countries have a loan or line of credit, compared with almost half in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Although some Governments have responded to the pandemic with economic support measures – transferring cash to businesses, delaying loan payments or refinancing loans to more favourable terms – policymakers in LDCs and emerging economies have far less leverage to provide such measures. In a post-pandemic world, access to finance will play an essential role in economic recovery.

Rural road connectivity provides farmers and their families easy access to markets, along with health and education facilities. This helps reduce poverty by elevating agricultural productivity, business profitability and employment. Rural access index data – measuring the proportion of people within two kilometres of an all-season road – from 25 countries mostly developing countries for 2018 to 2019 indicate that almost 300 million out of 520 million rural dwellers lack good access to roads.

In 2020, almost the entire world population lived within range of mobile networks, with 85 per cent covered by a fourth-generation (4G) network. Between 2015 and 2020, global 4G coverage doubled. However, “coverage” does not necessarily mean “usage”: only 51 per cent of the population used the Internet in 2019, leaving 3.7 billion people without Internet access. In LDCs, only one in five people were online in 2020, failing to achieve the target of universal and affordable Internet access.