The OECD Composite leading indicators (CLIs), designed to anticipate turning points in economic activity relative to trend, show signs of moderating pace of growth at above-trend levels in the OECD area as a whole and in most major economies. The latest CLIs point to signs of moderating pace of growth at above-trend level in the United States, Japan and Canada. Similar indications have emerged in the United Kingdom and in the euro area as a whole, including Germany and Italy. In France, there are also signs of moderating pace of ...

Few issues have sparked more attention than how to avoid environmental and human catastrophe from climate change. But even in the wake of massive public protests and an ambitious agenda since the 2015 Paris Agreement, governments are wary of the political costs of enacting climate mitigation policies. In recent IMF staff research, we identify strategies that can minimize or even eliminate such challenges. In the first analysis of its kind, we combined information on the political aftermath (governmental popular support) of policy changes with information on the policy changes themselves ...

Real household income per capita, which provides a better picture of people’s economic well-being than GDP, grew by 5.8% in the OECD area as a whole over the first quarter of 2021. The rise, the largest since 2008, is largely due to the United States’ significant increase in real household income, which is a direct result of the government’s recent fiscal support, including transfer payments made to households. This exceptional rise in incomes was much higher than the 0.5% increase in GDP per capita recorded in the OECD area during ...

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to exacerbate restrictions on government spending throughout the world, the UN chief on Tuesday welcomed the decision by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to approve a $650 billion allocation of Special Drawing Rights to “boost liquidity”. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement on the policy change towards Special Drawing Rights or SDRs, a type of foreign reserve asset that are IMF defined and maintained, as additional funding that could help to pay down debts. He also underscored that economies not in need of access to ...

Year-on-year inflation in the OECD area increased to 4.1% in June 2021, compared with 3.9% in May. Inflation in the euro area was significantly lower than in the OECD area as a whole, and especially than in the United States. After three consecutive months of sharp increases, energy prices in the OECD area continued to rise at 17.4% in June, but at a slower pace than in May (at 19.4%) while food price inflation increased to 1.8%, compared with 1.4% in May. OECD annual inflation excluding food and energy also ...

India’s chief economic advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian hit back at the International Monetary Fund for downgrading the country’s growth projection, saying it’s “significantly off the mark.” The IMF last week cut India’s growth outlook to 9.5% for the fiscal year ending in March 2022 — that’s 3% lower than its April forecast of 12.5%. In an accompanying report, the IMF said India’s prospects were downgraded following a severe second wave of Covid-19 outbreak and an “expected slow recovery in confidence from that setback.” Speaking to CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Monday, ...

The global economic recovery continues, but with a widening gap between advanced economies and many emerging market and developing economies. Our latest global growth forecast of 6 percent for 2021 is unchanged from the previous outlook, but the composition has changed. Growth prospects for advanced economies this year have improved by 0.5 percentage point, but this is offset exactly by a downward revision for emerging market and developing economies driven by a significant downgrade for emerging Asia. For 2022, we project global growth of 4.9 percent, up from our previous ...

When there’s an elephant in the room, it’s hard to think about much else. That’s the problem for the International Monetary Fund, whose latest economic update focuses on huge risks that Covid-19 still poses to the global economy and consequently pays less attention to some of the other potential pitfalls that may also lie ahead. IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said on Tuesday that the emergence of new highly infectious variants of Covid-19 could wipe about $4.5 trillion off global GDP by 2025. That would unfold either if a new ...

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday maintained its 6% global growth forecast for 2021, upgrading its outlook for the United States and other wealthy economies but cutting estimates for developing countries struggling with surging COVID-19 infections. The divergence is based largely on better access to COVID-19 vaccines and continued fiscal support in advanced economies, while emerging markets face difficulties on both fronts, the IMF said in an update to its World Economic Outlook. “Close to 40 percent of the population in advanced economies has been fully vaccinated, compared with 11 ...

The OECD area employment rate – the share of the working-age population with jobs – rose to 66.8% in the first quarter of 2021, from 66.7% in the previous quarter. Some care is needed in interpreting the latest developments in the OECD employment rate, as methodological changes to the EU Labour Force Survey blur the comparison between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 for EU countries. In addition, a large part of the increase in the third and, to a lesser extent, fourth quarter of ...

The International Monetary Fund’s Executive Board said the U.S. Federal Reserve has been “highly effective” at managing the COVID-19 crisis and supporting recovery with its commitment to overshoot a 2% inflation target in the near term. The board, releasing its full report here on its annual assessment of U.S. economic policies, said the Fed must carefully communicate its thinking to ensure that the eventual withdrawal of monetary accommodation and asset purchases is orderly and transparent. The IMF has raised concerns that higher U.S. interest rates will drain capital flows from ...

The International Monetary Fund is estimating this month that global growth for 2021 will be about 6%, the same as forecast in April, but with some countries growing faster and others more slowly, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Wednesday. Georgieva, speaking at an online event sponsored by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that economic recovery will be held back unless the pace of COVID-19 vaccination picks up, adding that a goal of ending the pandemic by the end of 2022 will not be reached at the ...

The International Monetary Fund’s No. 2 official on Tuesday called on countries to pivot from saving their economies from collapse to reviving growth-oriented policy reforms to boost their recovery prospects and make them more sustainable. IMF First Deputy Managing Director Geoffrey Okamoto said in a blog posting on the IMF website that the COVID-19 pandemic delayed and reversed some pro-growth reforms and restoring these can help make up for output lost during the pandemic. Reforms that allow for faster restructurings and resolution of unviable businesses and labor policies to help ...

Washington, DC: The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the Article IV consultation [1] with Greece and endorsed the staff appraisal on July 9 without a meeting on a lapse-of-time basis. Greece entered the pandemic with an unfinished recovery, but the country has demonstrated resilience in facing COVID-19. The economy contracted by 8.2 percent in 2020, better than expected given Greece’s high dependence on tourism and pre-existing vulnerabilities. The government provided among the largest on-budget fiscal stimuli in the euro zone and supervisory and ECB accommodation shielded ...

Protests driven by the pandemic’s economic fallout are on the rise, with potentially long-lasting economic consequences. Protests can be catalysts for political reform and social change. But what impact do they have on the economy? According to the latest Global Peace Index, the number of riots, general strikes and anti-government demonstrations around the world have increased by a staggering 244 percent in the last decade. Lockdowns and fears of contagion forced a temporary lull. But in virtually every region of the world, demonstrators are making a comeback. Causes range from ...