I would like to use this opportunity to explain this package and to answer your questions. We are clearly living in extraordinary and challenging times. The coronavirus is first and foremost a very major public health problem. But it has also become a major economic problem, which is having deep ramifications for financial systems around the world.
The somewhat higher GDP levels which might have been attained in the counterfactual (as a result of the higher fiscal deficit) would not have altered these ratios by much.7 Besides, GDP might not have been much higher despite more net Government spending: doubts about the chances of the Government recovering access to market financing on any reasonable terms at the end of the programme would likely have constrained business investment and household consumption.