Global growth is projected to be stable at 3.3% this year and next, but there is uncertainty and risk to the forecast the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook (WEO) report Friday (January 17, 2025) in Washington, DC.
“In our latest projections, global growth remains steady at 3.3% this year and next, broadly aligned with world potential growth. Inflation is declining to 4.2% this year and 3.5% next year in a return to central bank targets. This means that the very large global disruptions that started with the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and triggered the largest inflation surge in 40 years are behind us. This is the end of a cycle, and the beginning of a new one,” said IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas.
But with geopolitical conflict, increasing trade tensions and elections looming and leadership changes in major economies around the world there is considerable uncertainty.
“Elevated trade policy uncertainty will contribute to anemic demand in many countries, including China, where we project 4.6% growth this year,” said Gourinchas, head of the Fund’s Research Department.
With all the uncertainty, it’s important for policy makers to make structural reforms and pursue multilateral cooperation that will boost growth the report said.
“Countries should continue to seek ways to improve growth by focusing their efforts on ambitious structural reforms that will help better allocate resources. Increased government revenues foster innovation and competition. On that front, it is also important to preserve and improve on multilateral institutions to help unlock a richer, more resilient and sustainable global economy,” said Gourinchas.
Gourinchas said that in a more shock-prone world that countries should get their fiscal house in order and set credible path to debt reduction, to ensure they have fiscal space to deal with future crises.
“So it's certainly the case that countries will be on a much safer ground by bringing down their debt to GDP levels, which will also give them room if there is, a crisis that happens, if there is a shock - and we live in a world in which there can be more shocks - we can have energy shocks, we can have shocks related to disruptions to the global trading system, that they will be in a position to address those shocks rather than being a little bit out of ammunition. So our recommendation here is that it's sound insurance policy to rebuild this fiscal buffers and do it over time,” finished Gourinchas
To read the full report, https://0-www-imf-org.library.svsu.edu/en/Publications/WEO