Thursday, October 8, 2015

Storm Clouds Gather Over Global Economy as World Struggles to Shake Off Crisis

AFP

IMF Framed Forecast – 2015, UK Growth Among Downgrades


According to the International Monetary Fund, Britain is among some of the shining lights in the global economy and as the world views, the slowest period of growth since the financial crisis. The IMF framed up its forecast in 2015, for UK growth among downgrades `across the board’ for emerging and advanced economies.

It stated that China’s slowdown, dropping commodity prices together with an expected increase in the interest rate in US would tend to weigh on output. It is now expected that the world economy would expand by 3.1% in 2015 from a forecast of 3.3% in July. Since 2009, this would represent the slowest expansion when the global growth came to a halt.

According to the IMF’s chief economist, Maurice Obstfeld, who stated that `six years after the world economy came from its broadest and deepest post-war recession, the holy grail of robust as well as synchronised global expansion remains elusive.


Inspite of differences in country specific outlooks, the new forecasts tend to mark down expected near-term growth marginally though nearly across the board. Besides, downside risks to the world economy seems more pronounced than it was a few months back’

Risk of Recession over Next Year


The Fund had also cautioned that the risk of recession in the US, Eurozone as well as Japan over the next year seemed to have increased in the past six months since emerging markets face a fifth year of slow growth.

The year of weak demand as well as anaemic productivity development meant the probability of damage to the development on medium term was a great concern, warns IMF. Further drop in global demand would be leading to near stagnation in advanced economies should emerging markets tend to continue faltering, it added.

The UK economy is anticipated to grow by 2.5% this year, slightly up on the IMF’s forecast of July by 2.4% and its expectation for 2016 growth remained unchanged at 2.2%. IMF had stated in its latest World Economic Outlook that `in the United Kingdom constant steady growth is anticipated which is supported by lower oil prices as well as constant recovery in wage growth’.

Fund Cautions – Countries Need to Be Prepared for Higher Interest Rate


The outlook also portrayed US growth for 2015 had been higher than expected three months back when Italy envisaged upgrades for 2015 as well as 2016. The biggest economy of the world is expected to lead growth in the G7 this year but the UK and US economies have shown indications of slowing down, recently. The latest health-check of IMF portrays that it anticipates the UK government to balance its books by 2020.

Mr Obstfeld had stated that the UK and the US seemed `not totally immune’ to a probable slowdown in China but were less open than countries with closer trade connections. As per the Bank of England, should China’s grown be 3% lower over the next three years than it present forecast, it would knock 0.1% off the growth of UK.

IMF has stated that the risk of a recession would now be higher in the Latin America 5 – Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru when compared to the rest of the world group. The Fund has informed that countries need to be prepared for higher interest rates in the US which is expected by the turn of this year. It also added that the Bank of England would probably raise rates by 2016.

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