China should avoid a premature tightening of macro-economic policies as its economy is still not performing at its full potential despite rebounding from COVID-19, International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials said on Friday. “Key structural reforms should be re-accelerated to lift China’s potential growth,” the officials told reporters at an online news conference accompanying the launch of its annual assessment of the Chinese economy on Friday. In its report, the IMF commends China for its initial handling of the pandemic, but stresses that the factors that saw economic growth slow significantly ...

China’s economy is set to rebound this year as mobility and activity pick up after the lifting of pandemic restrictions, providing a boost to the global economy. The economy will expand 5.2 percent this year, according to our latest projections, versus 3 percent last year. That’s good news for China and the world as the Chinese economy is now expected to contribute a quarter of global growth this year. Even so, China still faces significant economic challenges. The contraction in real estate remains a major headwind, and there is still ...

Global central banks need to make clear to financial markets the probable need for interest rates to remain higher for longer in order to bring inflation sustainably back down to target and avoid a rebound in price pressures, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday. The warning comes amid a significant easing in financial conditions since October as investors looked past the steep run up in interest rates by central banks last year designed to bring down an inflation rate that breached 6% in more than 80% of the world’s ...

Latin America and the Caribbean will face rising poverty and food insecurity in 2023, and trust in government will remain low as long as corruption remains high and the wealthy do not pay their fair share in taxes, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. Latin America’s slowing economic growth and high inflation could intensify social unrest, as “many people in the region will see their living standards decline this year,” IMF officials wrote in a blog post. “Finding common ground to pursue sensible economic reforms in an environment of ...

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development detailed on Thursday the final guidance for governments on how to bring the new global minimum corporate tax into their law books, taking the reform a step closer to roll out next year. In the deepest overhaul of cross-border tax rules in a generation, nearly 140 countries had agreed in 2021 to apply a minimum tax rate of 15% on multinationals by committing to a top-up tax on profits booked in countries that have lower rates. The OECD’s final guidance aims to clarify ...

International Monetary Fund economists said on Tuesday that Singapore and other Southeast Asian economies are seeing downgrades to their 2023 growth outlooks because slowing global growth will outweigh the positive impact from China’s economic reopening. Chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told a news briefing on the IMF’s latest global growth forecasts these forces prompted the IMF to reduce Singapore’s GDP growth outlook for 2023 to 1.5% from a 2.3% forecast issued last October. IMF’s 2023 forecast for ASEAN-5 – Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines – was cut to 4.3% ...

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday raised its 2023 global growth outlook slightly due to “surprisingly resilient” demand in the United States and Europe, an easing of energy costs and the reopening of China’s economy after Beijing abandoned its strict COVID-19 restrictions. The IMF said global growth would still fall to 2.9% in 2023 from 3.4% in 2022, but its latest World Economic Outlook forecasts mark an improvement over an October prediction of 2.7% growth this year with warnings that the world could easily tip into recession. For 2024, the ...

Britain is the only Group of Seven nation to have suffered a cut to its 2023 economic growth outlook in International Monetary Fund forecasts published on Tuesday, adding to pressure on finance minister Jeremy Hunt to come up with a growth plan. Britain’s flagging economy now looks set to shrink by 0.6% this year, a sharp downgrade from previously expected growth of 0.3% in the IMF’s last forecast in October. All other G7 economies are predicted to grow this year, mostly at a stronger pace than the IMF forecast three ...

The global economy is poised to slow this year, before rebounding next year. Growth will remain weak by historical standards, as the fight against inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine weigh on activity. Despite these headwinds, the outlook is less gloomy than in our October forecast, and could represent a turning point, with growth bottoming out and inflation declining. Economic growth proved surprisingly resilient in the third quarter of last year, with strong labor markets, robust household consumption and business investment, and better-than-expected adaptation to the energy crisis in Europe. ...

The International Monetary Fund on Monday raised its output growth estimate on emerging markets for this year, with projections now showing the economic slowdown in the region may have bottomed out in 2022, on the back of China reopening, a resilient India and unexpected growth in Russia. On its most recent update to the World Economic Outlook, the IMF sees growth in emerging market and developing economies at 4.0% in 2023, 0.3 percentage point higher than its October projection, and 0.1 percentage point higher than the 3.9% estimate for 2022. ...

The shocks that have shaken the global economy in recent years have introduced a new normal for turbulence, driven in some cases by political fragmentation between countries. These episodes have also lifted uncertainty to exceptionally high levels, which in turn hurts economic growth as our research shows. To better track the evolution of these conditions, we updated our World Uncertainty Index to show more frequent readings that are monthly, instead of quarterly, and incorporate data for 71 economies dating back to 2008. As the Chart of the Week shows, the ...

The Bank of Japan could consider steps to allow bond yields to move more flexibly even before inflation durably hits its 2% target, the International Monetary Fund’s Japan mission chief Ranil Salgado told Reuters. Allowing long-term interest rates to move more flexibly would allow the BOJ to address both upside and downside risks to inflation, and help iron out market distortions caused by its heavy bond buying, Salgado said in an interview on Thursday. “We don’t see this as really changing the (BOJ’s) accommodative stance. It’s more to balance some ...

Fabrizia Lapecorella has been appointed as a new Deputy Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. She will take up her duties on 3 April 2023. Fabrizia will bring to her post significant expertise, experience and international networks across the tax, financial and economic policy spheres. An Italian national, she is currently the Head of the Department for European Policies in the presidency of the Council of Ministers of Italy. She served as the Director-General of Finance in the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance from 2008 to ...

The International Monetary Fund has reached an understanding in principle with China about a debt restructuring strategy that could help resolve Zambia’s debt crisis, its chief said on Tuesday in Lusaka. Kristalina Georgieva made the comments on the final day of a three-day trip to Zambia which secured an IMF loan programme last August after it became the first African country to default on its sovereign debt during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Zambia has done its part under the IMF programme and the country has performed really strongly, and now it’s ...

The global economic outlook is not as bad as feared a couple of months ago — “but less bad doesn’t quite yet mean good,” according to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. “We have to be cautious,” Kristalina Georgieva told a closing panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos moderated by CNBC. She said headline inflation was heading down and China’s reopening was expected to boost global growth, with the IMF forecasting its economy will outpace global growth of 2.7% this year, at 4.4%, after slipping below ...