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 ...

The OECD employment and labour force participation rates were stable at 69.4% and 73.2% in the third quarter of 2022, their highest levels since the start of the series in 2005 and 2008 respectively. About 40% of OECD countries were at record highs for both indicators. The number of persons employed, as employees or self-employed workers, also reached its highest level at 607.9 million workers (Figure1, Tables 1 and 2). The OECD employment rate in the third quarter of 2022 edged up to 62.4% for women, while it decreased to ...

China could see a sharp recovery in economic growth from the second quarter onwards based on current infection trends after the dismantling of most COVID-19 restrictions, IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath said on Wednesday. “We expect growth in China to come back, to rebound,” Gopinath told Reuters in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Looking at the infection trends, and if those persist, we could see a very quick recovery starting from after the first quarter of this year,” she said of a current surge in ...

Revenue gains from the implementation of a historic agreement to reform the international tax system will be higher than previously expected, according to new OECD analysis released today. The two-pillar solution to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalisation and globalisation of the economy will lead to additional taxing rights for market jurisdictions and put a floor on tax competition through the creation of a global 15% minimum effective corporate income tax rate. The proposed global minimum tax is now expected to result in annual global revenue gains of ...

The International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told CNBC Tuesday that the days of her institution giving regular global growth downgrades are nearly over. “I don’t see a downgrade now, but growth in 2023 will slow down,” Georgieva said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Our projection is that we will go by half a percentage point down vis-a-vis 2022. The good news though is that we expect growth to bottom out this year and 2024 to be a year in which we finally see the world ...

A severe fragmentation of the global economy after decades of increasing economic integration could reduce global economic output by up to 7%, but the losses could reach 8-12% in some countries, if technology is also decoupled, the International Monetary Fund said in a new staff report. Tne IMF said even limited fragmentation could shave 0.2% off of global GDP, but said more work was needed to assess the estimated costs to the international monetary system and the global financial safety net (GFSN). The note, released late Sunday, noted that the ...