Gokhan Ergocun and Ovunc Kutlu
10 October 2023•Update: 10 October 2023
ISTANBUL
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday announced that it kept its GDP growth forecast for the global economy constant at 3% for 2023, but lowered its expectation for 2024 by 0.1 percentage points to 2.9%.
The institute's growth expectation for the advanced countries were unchanged at 1.5% and 1.4% for 2023 and 2024, respectively, the IMF said in a report.
Emerging markets' GDP growth is expected to be at 4% for both 2023 and 2024, while the fund's previous forecast, in July, was at 4.1% for 2024.
The euro area is expected to grow 0.7% in 2023, down 0.2 percentage points, and 1.2% in 2024, down 0.3 points.
Among major eurozone economies, Germany is expected to narrow 0.5% this year and grow 0.9% next year, while both expectations dropped.
The IMF's forecasts for the US economy were 2.1% this year and 1.5% next year, both showed a rise from the previous report.
The Chinese economy is expected to grow 5% this year and 4.2% in 2024, while these figures were at 2.2% and 1.1% for Russia, respectively.
The IMF also lowered its forecast for world trade growth volume from 2% to 0.9% for this year and from 3.7% to 3.5% for the next year.
The financial institution revised up its growth estimates for Türkiye due to "stronger-than-expected domestic demand."
The Turkish economy is now expected to expand 4% in 2023 and 3% in 2024, up from the previous projections of 3% and 2.8%, respectively.
The IMF revised up its forecast for Russia's economy to 2.2% for this year, from its previous estimate of 1.5%; but it lowered the 2024 projection to 1.1% from 1.3%.
"Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the inflation surge of 2022, there was little prospect of returning to the pre-pandemic path, with expectations of longer-term scarring, particularly for emerging market and developing economies," the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook report for October 2023.
"Economies heavily dependent on Russian energy imports experienced a steeper increase in energy prices and a sharper slowdown," it added.
India's economic growth forecast for 2023 was revised up to 6.3% from 6.1%, while it was kept unchanged at 6.3% for 2024.
The IMF, in addition, revised up its growth estimate for the UK economy to 0.5% for 2023 from its previous expectation of 0.4%; but the projection for 2024 was lowered to 0.6% from 1%.
