WASHINGTON: The World Bank slashed its 2023 growth forecasts on Tuesday to levels teetering on the brink of recession for many countries as the impact of central bank rate hikes intensifies, Russia's war in Ukraine continues, and the world's major economic engines sputter.
The development lender said it expected global GDP growth of 1.7% in 2023, the slowest pace outside the 2009 and 2020 recessions since 1993. In its previous Global Economic Prospects report in June 2022, the bank had forecast 2023 global growth at 3.0%.
It forecast global growth in 2024 to pick up to 2.7% -- below the 2.9% estimate for 2022 -- and said average growth for the 2020-2024 period would be under 2% -- the slowest five-year pace since 1960.
The bank said major slowdowns in advanced economies, including sharp cuts to its forecast to 0.5% for both the US and the eurozone, could foreshadow a new global recession less than three years after the last one.
"Given fragile economic conditions, any new adverse development -- such as higher-than-expected inflation, abrupt rises in interest rates to contain it, a resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic or escalating geopolitical tensions -- could push the global economy into recession," the bank said in a statement accompanying the report.
The bleak outlook will be especially hard on emerging market and developing economies, the World Bank said, as they struggle with heavy debt burdens, weak currencies and income growth, and slowing business investment that is now forecast at a 3.5% annual growth rate over the next two years -- less than half the pace of the past two decades.
"Weakness in growth and business investment will compound the already devastating reversals in education, health, poverty and infrastructure and the increasing demands from climate change," World Bank President David Malpass said.
China's growth in 2022 slumped to 2.7%, its second-slowest pace since the mid-1970s after 2020, due to Covid restrictions, property turmoil and drought. REUTERS