Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The COVID-19 outbreak is causing a global economic shock as supply chains are disrupted and demand is impacted. We've seen the global reaction to the virus spreading in countries outside China and reflected in the global stock markets in recent days. International credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) last week cut its 2020 global growth forecast by half a percent, saying that Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Thailand will either enter or flirt with recession. This highlights why the strength of the New Zealand economy going into this situation is important. S&P last week forecast 2 percent growth for 2020. We go into this with unemployment at 4 percent; Government debt, lower than we inherited it, at 19.5 percent of GDP; and, just today, we saw that manufacturing activity in the December quarter had had its strongest rise in six years.