UBP on Impact investing in emerging markets post COVID-19

Jun 18, 2021 Hubbis

2020 has been a real stress test for impact investors in terms of balancing impact and financial returns.

The pandemic led to a near complete shutdown of entire sectors of the economy. As we finally begin to see the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, we are starting to think about the challenges ahead. In many places, the pandemic has negated recent progress made for gender equality. There have also been warnings that the fall in carbon emissions that it has produced will only be a blip in a long-term trend if we do not put the right policies and solutions in place.

According to the World Bank, the crisis has led to an increase of more than 20% in the number of people living in extreme poverty: for the first time in a generation, the quest to end poverty has suffered a setback.

In this paper, UBP reviews how different emerging markets went through the crisis and look at the future for different sectors in terms of investments in a post-COVID-19 world.

Key points:

COVID-19 has exposed how wide the gap is between the various emerging markets.
The pandemic has worsened an already bad income distribution problem in many EM countries.
In the post-COVID-19 world, we divide the universe in three categories of sector: those profoundly and negatively impacted by the pandemic; those that benefited from an acceleration in growth due to the pandemic; those for which the pandemic was a mere bump in the road and where the growth outlook remained intact.

Read the full report