The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday the recent jump in COVID-19 cases in India posed downside risks to the Fund’s April forecast for 12.5% growth in India’s economic output in fiscal years 2021 and 2022. The IMF will revisit that forecast when it issued a fresh World Economic Outlook in July, IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters at a regular briefing, but gave no further details. He said the developments in India, the world’s second most populous nation, would have spillover effects for the region and the global economy, ...

Real household income per capita, which provides a better picture of people’s economic well-being than GDP, fell by 1.4% in the OECD area in the fourth quarter of 2020. This decline occurred despite a continued rise in real GDP per capita for the OECD area by 1.0%, following the sharp increase by 9.2% recorded in the previous quarter. Cumulatively however, since 2019 Q4, real household income per capita increased by 2.0% in the OECD area, while real GDP per capita declined by 3.4%. Overall, the decline of 1.4% is the ...

Annual inflation in the OECD area increased to 2.4% in March 2021, compared with 1.7% in February. Annual energy prices rose sharply by 7.4% in March, the highest rate since October 2018. This reflected both the base-year effect with a sharp drop in energy prices in March 2020 and a contemporaneous rise in energy prices in March 2021. Food price inflation slowed slightly to 2.7%, compared with 3.0% in February. OECD annual inflation excluding food and energy increased slightly, to 1.8% in March, compared with 1.7% in February. Source: OECD

China’s favorable growth prospects and further opening-up policies are key factors that attract foreign direct investment (FDI), said an official of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). FDI inflows to China increased 14 percent last year, making the country the top destination worldwide, noted Margit Molnar, head of the China desk at the OECD Economics Department, in an interview with Xinhua. Meanwhile, global FDI flows dropped by 38 percent in 2020 to 846 billion U.S. dollars, the lowest level since 2005, according to data released by the Paris-based ...

Saudi Arabia’s real oil GDP is projected to contract by 0.5% in 2021, compared with a contraction of 6.7% in 2020, given production levels agreed by the OPEC+ group, the International Monetary Fund said May 3. Moreover, the country’s oil GDP is expected to grow by 6.8% in 2022 as the current OPEC+ agreement is assumed to end as announced, the IMF said in its annual Article IV mission statement. OPEC and its allies have agreed to ease production cuts, after ministers April 27 endorsed previously agreed plans to boost ...

Global foreign direct investment flows ebbed to a 15-year low last year and China, one of the few major economies to eke out growth, overtook the United States as the top destination, OECD data showed. As the coronavirus wreaked havoc on the global economy, global FDI flows dropped 38% in 2020 to $846 billion, the lowest level since 2005, according to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. That represented only 1% of global gross domestic product, a level not seen since 1999. A recovery in cross-border mergers and ...

One year since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy remains under pressure as the human toll rises and millions remain unemployed. However, the way out of this crisis is increasingly visible, despite considerable uncertainty about the future path of the pandemic. Hundreds of millions of people are being vaccinated at an unprecedented pace and are adapting to ways of working with reduced mobility. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published the April update of its World Economic Outlook (WEO), entitled “Managing divergent recoveries”. Four points summarize ...

The rise in long-term US interest rates has become a focus of global macro-financial concerns. The nominal yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury has increased about 70 basis points since the beginning of the year. This reflects in part an improving US economic outlook amid strong fiscal support and the accelerating recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. So an increase would be expected. But other factors like investors’ concerns about the fiscal position and uncertainty about the economic and policy outlook may also be playing a role and help explain the ...

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will expedite the ongoing economic integration of the Asia-Pacific region, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) official has said. “Production, especially on the manufacturing side, has been increasingly integrated across countries in the region … you would expect this to continue,” Helge Berger, IMF’s China mission chief and assistant director in the Asia and Pacific Department, told Xinhua in a recent interview. “I think a factor that will accelerate this development going forward is the recently agreed regional trade agreement, the RCEP,” Berger said. Berger ...

It is a “positive step” for the world that the United States and China are cooperating on sustainable finance under the Group of 20 (G20), International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said. “Certainly having the two largest economies cooperating on sustainable finance is a very positive step in a world that is undergoing transformation, primarily because of the pressures that are coming from climate risks, and also to make sure that social and environmental issues are well integrated in investment strategies,” Georgieva said in an exclusive interview ...

Europe’s economy is on track to return to its pre-crisis levels in 2022, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, though this projection depends on the region’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign. European countries have been forced to introduce new restrictions or toughen previous public health measures in recent weeks as Covid infections have surged. This led to a 0.2 percentage point drop in the IMF’s growth forecast for this year, which currently stands at 4.5%. “On the assumption that vaccines become widely available in the summer of 2021 and throughout 2022, ...

The OECD area employment rate – the share of the working-age population with jobs – rose by 1.0 percentage point in the fourth quarter of 2020, to 66.7%, remaining 1.9 percentage points below the rate observed in the first quarter of 2020. In the same period, the OECD labour force participation rate (i.e. the share of people of working-age who are either employed or unemployed) increased by 0.4 percentage point, to 71.7%, still 0.9 percentage point below its level in the first quarter of 2020. Some care is needed in ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought social and economic disruption worldwide, but is also providing governments with the opportunity to put economies on a more sustainable and inclusive growth path while addressing the underlying challenges, according to the OECD’s Going for Growth policy report. Going for Growth 2021: Shaping a Vibrant Recovery analyses pre-existing weaknesses as well as those brought on by the pandemic, and offers policy makers country-specific advice to seize the opportunity for a fundamental reset. OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and Italian Minister of Economy and Finance Daniele Franco ...

It is a “positive step” for the world that the United States and China are cooperating on sustainable finance under the Group of 20 (G20), International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said. “Certainly having the two largest economies cooperating on sustainable finance is a very positive step in a world that is undergoing transformation, primarily because of the pressures that are coming from climate risks, and also to make sure that social and environmental issues are well integrated in investment strategies,” Georgieva said in an exclusive interview ...

Asia’s economy is expected to grow by 7.6 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Tuesday, while warning of “huge uncertainty” surrounding the projections. “The pandemic has resulted in unprecedented output losses in the Asia-Pacific region,” Jonathan D. Ostry, acting director of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, said during a virtual news conference. The pandemic is receding in some countries, elsewhere, “second or third waves of infections are raging,” notably in India and some of the ASEAN economies, he noted, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian ...