World economy characterized by high uncertainty - IMF managing director
YEREVAN, April 11. /ARKA/. The world economy is characterized by high uncertainty, recovery remains elusive and fragmentation deepens, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday speaking in Washington along with World Bank (WB) President David Malpass, TASS reported.
"We have once again brought members [of our organizations] together at a time of high uncertainty. The strong [economic] recovery we so hope for is still somewhat elusive. Why? Because we have a significant inflation problem," Georgieva said in a speech that opened the spring session of the IMF and WB governing bodies.
"Despite the remarkable resilience of consumer spending in the United States, in Europe, despite the uplift from China's reopening, global growth would remain below 3%" in 2023, Kristalina Georgieva said.
The fund now expects global growth to remain at close to 3% for the next half decade - its lowest medium-term forecast since the 1990s.
"What's more worrying is that it [growth] will stay below 3 percent for the next five years. That doesn't give us much hope of meeting people's aspirations, especially poor people around the world and, most importantly, poor people in poor countries," Georgieva added.
"The ties that hold us together have become weaker in recent years. Fragmentation is increasing," she stressed.
According to the IMF managing director, this means that the integrated economy, which has contributed to growth and prosperity over the past 30 years, is facing a "negative impact."
As she noted, IMF research shows that fragmentation in trade could lead to a 7 percent slowdown in global GDP growth over many years. -0-
