IMF Forecast October 2023

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its latest World Economic Outlook on October 10, 2023. The report confirms global growth for 2023 at 3 per cent, in line with previous predictions, before decreasing to 2.9 per cent in 2024. The IMF raised inflation estimates for 2023 by 0.1 percentage point, compared to July predictions, to 6.9 per cent. However, they have projected inflation to decline steadily with an estimation of 5.8 per cent in 2024.

The IMF increased the 2023 GDP forecast of the United States by 0.3 percentage points, from 1.8 per cent to 2.1 per cent. Other advanced economies see their growth improve: IMF revised the estimates for the United Kingdom (from 0.4 to 0.5 per cent), France (from 0.8 to 1.0 per cent), and Japan (from 1.4 to 2.0 per cent). The projection for Spain is to remain at 2.5 per cent, in line with the previous outlook. The economies that experienced a downward trend in the forecast are Germany by 0.2 percentage points (from -0.3 to -0.5 per cent) and Italy by 0.4 percentage points (from 1.1 to 0.7 per cent).

The forecast for 2023 also has revisions among a few large emerging markets. The IMF revised China’s growth outlook for 2023 downwards by 0.2 percentage points, from 5.2 to 5.0 per cent. India saw its GDP growth revised up by a further 0.2 percentage points from the previous outlook to 6.3 per cent. For the largest five ASEAN economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), growth is projected at 4.2 per cent in 2023.