IMF Forecasts Stronger Recovery For World Economy

The International Monetary Fund is now forecasting a stronger economic recovery this year and next.

The IMF has upgraded both its UK and global forecasts compared with what it projected in January.

But the British economy is still predicted to return to its pre-pandemic level of activity only in late 2022.

The agency also warns that recoveries are diverging dangerously within and between countries.

The new UK forecast is for growth of 5.3% this year and 5.1% in 2022. Both figures are upgrades, though the latter is only marginally higher than the January forecast.

The recovery follows last year’s pandemic driven contraction of 9.9% which was the deepest of any of the G7 major developed economies.

Earlier the global organization gave an Overall forecast for the Sub Sahara African region is projected to contract by –3.0 percent in 2020. The largest impact of the crisis on growth has been for tourism-dependent economies, while commodity-exporting countries  Looking ahead, regional growth is forecast at 3.1 percent in 2021. This is a smaller expansion than expected in much of the rest of the world, partly reflecting sub-Saharan Africa’s relatively limited policy space within which to sustain a fiscal expansion.