The Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday that the year 2023 will be difficult for most of the global economies, at a time when most of the main engines of global growth, namely the United States, Europe and China, are suffering from weak economic activity.
Georgieva said in remarks in a televised interview that the new year will be "more difficult than the year we left behind, because the three major economies, the US, the EU and China are all slowing down simultaneously."
It is noteworthy that the IMF cut its forecast for the growth of the global economy during 2023 by 0.2% to 2.7%, compared to a previous forecast last July of the growth of the global economy during 2023 by 2.9 %.
The IMF expected that 2023 would witness an economic recession that millions of people around the world would feel.
If the growth rates during the global crisis, and the pandemic were put aside, then the expected growth rate for 2023 is the weakest since 2001, according to the World Economic Outlook report published by the IMF on Tuesday.
Estimates of global GDP growth for the current year 2022 remained unchanged at 3.2%, lower than the growth rate recorded in 2021, which amounted to 6%.
The report indicated that more than a third of the global economy will witness two consecutive quarters of economic contraction, while the world's major economies will continue to slow down.
The report stressed that the war in Ukraine continues to "strongly destabilize the global economy", as its effects caused an "acute" energy crisis in Europe, in addition to the devastation in Ukraine itself.
The price of natural gas has more than quadrupled since 2021, with Russia now supplying gas to the European continent less than 20% of 2021 levels.
Food prices have also increased as a result of the crisis.
The IMF forecasts a slowdown in global growth from 6% in 2021 to 3.2% in 2022 and 2.7% in 2023.
The global slowdown in 2022 is as projected in the July 2022 World Economic Outlook (WEO) update, while the forecast for 2023 is lower than projected by 0.2 percentage point. In the revised forecasts, 93% of countries received downgrades to their growth outlook.
Global inflation is likely to decline to 6.5% in 2023 and to 4.1% by 2024, according to IMF projections.
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