But the forces causing deceleration are still in place. Global growth this year will be closer to 3%, with rising financial tensions in Europe.
(May 6): In April 2018, the International Monetary Fund projected that the world economy would grow robustly, at just above 3.9% that year and into 2019. The global upswing, the fund said, had become “broader and stronger.” That view quickly proved too rosy. In 2018, the world economy grew only 3.6%. And in its just-released update, IMF recognises that the ongoing slowdown will push global growth down to only 3.3% in 2019.
As always, the fund blames the lower–than-forecast growth on temporary factors, the latest culprits being US-China trade tensions and Brexit-related uncertainties. So, the message is that growth will rebound to 3.6% next year. As Deutsche Bank points out, IMF forecasts imply that fewer countries will be in recession in 2020 than at any time in recent decades.
