WASHINGTON, May 13 (Xinhua) -- International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Tuesday that the multilateral lender would "very likely" further cut global growth forecasts, as COVID-19 continues to sweep the world.

During a virtual event sponsored by the Financial Times, Georgieva said incoming data from many countries is worse than the IMF's "already pessimistic projections."

In mid-April, the IMF projected in its World Economic Outlook that the global economy is on track to contract sharply by 3 percent in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, calling it the "worst recession" since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The April projection was already a downgrade of 6.3 percentage points from January, a major downward revision over just three months.

"Very likely we are going to come up with the update to our projections some time in June," Georgieva said. "Our expectation is that there would be a bit more bad news in terms of how we see 2020."

More than 100 countries have asked the multilateral lender for emergency financing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a recent virtual press conference, IMF Spokesperson Gerry Rice said the Executive Board has approved emergency financing for about 50 countries totaling 18 billion U.S. dollars as of May 6.

The IMF is moving "at an unprecedented speed, in an unprecedented way to meet this unprecedented challenge which we are all facing," Rice said.  ■