IMF Forecast January 2024

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) on January 30, 2024. The report confirms global growth for 2024 at 3.1 per cent, 0.2 percentage points higher than that previous estimates, and forecasts 3.2 per cent in 2025. Global inflation is expected to decline steadily to 5.8 per cent in 2024 and to 4.4 per cent in 2025.

The IMF increased the 2024 GDP forecast of the United States by 0.6 percentage points, from 1.5 per cent to 2.1 per cent. The projections for Italy (0.7 per cent) and United Kingdom (0.6 per cent) remain in line with the ones from the previous outlook, while other advanced economies see a downward trend in growth for 2024 compared to the October 2023 WEO: Canada (from 1.6 to 1.4 per cent), France (from 1.3 to 1 per cent), Germany (from 0.9 to 0.5 per cent), Japan (from 1 to 0.9 per cent), and Spain (from 1.7 to 1.5 per cent).

The forecast for 2024 also has revisions among a few large emerging markets. The IMF revised China’s growth outlook for 2024 increased by 0.4 percentage points, from 4.2 to 4.6 per cent. India saw its GDP growth revised up by a further 0.2 percentage points from the previous outlook to 6.5 per cent. For the largest five ASEAN economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), growth is projected at 4.7 per cent in 2024.