The IMF said it expects global economic growth to slow to 2.9% in 2024 from an expected 3% this year. The forecast for next year is down a notch from the 3% it predicted back in JulyInternational Monetary Fund Director of the Research Department Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas. AP File
The world economy is losing momentum in the face of higher interest rates, the ongoing war in Ukraine and widening geopolitical rifts, the International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday.The IMF said it expects global economic growth to slow to 2.9% in 2024 from an expected 3% this year. The forecast for next year is down a notch from the 3% it predicted back in July.
The deceleration comes at a time when the world has yet to fully mend from a devastating but short-lived COVID-19 recession in 2020. A series of shocks, including the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has slashed worldwide economic output by about $3.7 trillion over the past three years compared with pre-COVID trends.
“We see a global economy that is limping along,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters ahead of the IMF and World Bank’s fall meetings this week in Marrakech, Morocco.The IMF expectation of 3% growth this year is down from 3.5% in 2022 but unchanged from its July projections.
The news isn’t all bad. The world economy has displayed “remarkable resiliency,” Gourinchas said, at a time when the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks worldwide have aggressively raised interest rates to combat a resurgence in inflation.
The hikes have helped ease price pressures without putting many people out of work. That combination, he said, is “increasingly consistent” with a so-called soft landing — the idea that inflation can be contained without causing a recession.
The IMF sees global consumer price inflation dropping from 8.7% in 2022 to 6.9% this year and 5.8% in 2024.The United States is a standout in the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook. The IMF upgraded its forecast for U.S. growth this year to 2.1% (matching 2022) and 1.5% in 2024 (up sharply from the 1% it had predicted in July).
The U.S., an energy exporter, has not been hurt as much as countries in Europe and elsewhere by higher oil prices, which shot up after Russia invaded Ukraine last year and jumped more recently because of Saudi Arabia’s production cuts. And American consumers have been more willing than most to spend the savings they accumulated during the pandemic.
