Leçons macroéconomiques de la Covid-19: une analyse pour la RDC

This work aims at studying the macroeconomic impact of COVID-19 on the activity economic in DR Congo. To do this, a dynamic and stochastic general equilibrium model in the open economy is used and the model parameters are estimated using the Bayesian approach. The estimated data cover the period from the first quarter 2012 in the second quarter of 2020. The diagnostic tests, in particular the convergence test Monte-Carlo Markov chains (MCMC) lead to consider that the parameters are reliable. The results indicate that: (i) the COVID-19 shock would lead to a significant drop in the output gap until the 8th trimester after the incurrence of the shock; (ii) the level of consumption also suffers a downside effect following the health crisis up to more than 10 quarters after the shock; (iii) The nominal exchange rate also depreciates with a more and more attenuated from the 6th quarter after the shock, and (iv) the term of exchange suffers also from a negative effect but with a larger confidence interval, which could possibly reflect a potentially significant effect following the interruption of trade resulting from the measures of confinement.