IMF New Forecast 2021

The International Monetary Fund revised its estimates related to the GDP growth in 2021 and 2022. In the latest World Economic Outlook released on October 12th, 2021, IMF revised down its 2021 World GDP projection by 0.1 percentage points (from 6% to 5.9%) and left unchanged the forecast for 2022 (4.9%).

Although the recovery continues worldwide, the worsening of the pandemic and the inflation derived from the increase of raw materials prices disrupted the global supply chain, especially in low-income countries and several advanced economies. IMF lowered the 2021 GDP forecast of the United States by one percentage point, from 7% to 6%. Other advanced economies are also expected to slow down their growth: IMF revised the projections for Germany (from 3.6% to 3.1%), Spain (from 6.2% to 5.7%), Japan (from 2.8% to 2.4%), and Canada (from 6.3% to 5.7%). On the contrary, estimates for other EU members, such as Italy and France, improved significantly: according to the revised estimates, Italy is expected to grow by 5.8% in 2021 (up by 0.9 percentage points compared to the previous forecast) France 6.3%.

In Asia, the IMF maintained a 2021 GDP growth forecast of 8% for China (down by 0.1 percentage points) and 9.5% for India (unchanged compared to the previous estimates), while cut the growth forecast for the largest five ASEAN economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) from 4.3% to 2.9%