The global economy is continuing growing at a modest pace, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook. The Economic Outlook projects steady global GDP growth of 3.1% in 2024, the same as the 3.1% in 2023, followed by a slight pick-up to 3.2% in 2025. The impact of tight monetary conditions continues being felt, particularly in housing and credit markets, but global activity is proving relatively resilient, the decline in inflation continues, and private sector confidence is improving. The OECD unemployment rate stood at 4.9% in February, close to its ...

Britain’s economy will grow slower this year and next than thought only a few months ago and it will suffer higher inflation than its peers, forecasts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed on Thursday. The OECD cuts its British economic growth forecast to 0.4% for 2024 from 0.7% in February, and growth next year is expected to stand at just 1.0%, compared with a previous forecast of 1.2%. It means the OECD expects Britain’s economy will grow more slowly next year than France or Germany. Consumer prices ...

Relatively lower inflation in Asia means the region’s central banks can focus more on domestic conditions and less on what the U.S. Federal Reserve might do when setting monetary policy, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. The region is heading for a “soft landing” thanks to rapid disinflation creating room for easing monetary policies, the lender said in a report, although the pace of economic expansion is expected to slow over the next two years. “Don’t tie yourself too tight to what the Fed does, look at what’s happening ...

A groundbreaking international tax initiative managed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) continues making strong progress assisting developing countries boost tax revenues and better mobilise domestic resources, according to a report released today. Effective taxation and fiscal policies are vital for development financing as they not only generate revenue but also foster accountable and inclusive governance. In this context, the Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) Annual Report 2024 shows the impact of the initiative’s work over the past nine years, ...

A second consecutive year of high inflation pushed up labour taxes across OECD countries in 2023, according to a new OECD report. Taxing Wages 2024 reveals that effective tax rates on labour incomes rose in a majority of OECD countries with the post-tax income of single workers earning the average wage declining in 21 out of 38 OECD countries. In a majority of countries, the increase in labour taxation was primarily driven by increases in personal income tax. While real wages declined in 18 OECD countries, nominal wages increased in ...

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva bemoaned the slow pace of global growth, saying that Europe needed to do more to boost productivity and China should work to unleash greater consumer spending. Georgieva told a news conference during the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington that a number of factors are converging to hold back growth in Europe and China, from aging populations to sub-optimal allocations of capital, while the U.S. has far outperformed expectations. “This is what preoccupies us these days. How can we better stem ...

The United States needs to raise revenues to bring down high budget deficits even though they are helping to fuel global growth by stoking domestic U.S. demand, International Monetary Fund First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath said on Saturday. Gopinath told a fiscal forum at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings that U.S. deficits are projected to rise for years with one of the world’s steepest curves for debt. “The high levels of deficits are also supporting growth and demand in the U.S. that have positive spillover to the ...

Italy and France should cut spending faster than they currently plan to keep debt under control while Germany should loosen its own purse strings to revive growth, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday. Finance ministers from all over the world have descended on Washington this week to compare notes and hear from IMF and World Bank experts on topics ranging from fiscal policy to global growth and helping poorer countries. While the IMF’s advice is not binding for countries that do not receive its help, its latest musings on ...

Shareholders of the International Monetary Fund agreed this week on the importance of addressing challenges faced by low-income countries, many of which are facing unsustainable debt burdens, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday. Multiple reports from the IMF and the World Bank this week sounded the alarm about economic developments and prospects in low-income developing countries, which are still grappling with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and other shocks. The IMF lowered its 2024 growth forecast for low-income countries as a group to 4.7% from an estimate ...

A soft landing of easing inflation with “moderate economic cost” is within reach for European economies but is far from assured, with the recovery so far showing itself to be tentative in most economies across the region, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday in a report detailing Europe’s outlook. On the heels of another downgrade to the near-term growth outlook for the continent’s core euro area economies, the IMF said the feeble recovery reflects weaker consumer sentiment, the lagged effect of higher energy prices and softness in interest-rate sensitive ...

The steering committee for both International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on Saturday emphasized the need for broader accountability as the institutions implemented reforms to help countries grapple with climate change and other shocks. “We must hold ourselves accountable more broadly as we become a better and bigger bank,” said Mohammed bin Hadi Al Husseini, the United Arab Emirates’ minister of state for finance, who heads the joint Development Committee this year. Al Husseini issued a chair’s statement, rather than a communique, amid disagreements over wars in the Middle ...

The United States needs to raise revenues to bring down high budget deficits even though they are helping to fuel global growth by stoking domestic U.S. demand, International Monetary Fund First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath said on Saturday. Gopinath told a fiscal forum at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings that U.S. deficits are projected to rise for years with one of the world’s steepest curves for debt. “The high levels of deficits are also supporting growth and demand in the U.S. that has positive spillover to the ...

The International Monetary Fund urged Asian central banks on Thursday to focus on domestic inflation and avoid tying their policy decisions too closely to anticipated moves by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Receding expectations for a near-term interest cut by the U.S. central bank have fed steady dollar gains that have pushed down some Asian currencies such as the Japanese yen and the South Korean won. The IMF’s staff analysis showed that U.S. interest rates have a “strong and immediate” impact on Asian financial conditions and exchange rates, Krishna Srinivasan, director ...

The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday Middle East economies would grow at a slower pace this year than it previously projected as the war in Gaza, attacks on Red Sea shipping and lower oil output add to existing challenges of high debt and borrowing costs. The IMF revised down its 2024 growth forecast for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to 2.7% from 3.4% in its October regional outlook. That would be an improvement from 1.9% growth in 2023. The downward revision was driven by conflicts in ...

The International Monetary Fund’s executive board has backed a key change to give it more freedom to support countries in crisis evenif debt renegotiations with big creditor governments like China are still ongoing. The proposal is aimed at reforming what the IMF calls its Lending Into Official Arrears (LIOA) policy, a framework that determines if and when it can lend to a country that owes money to another IMF-member nation. In a statement late on Tuesday, the Fund said its board had endorsed “reforms to promote the IMF’s capacity to ...