The global economy will grow by 2.8% this year, according to the latest outlook forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This prediction is more optimistic than the 2.4% growth for 2002 that the IMF had previously forecast in December. In 2003 growth is expected to rise again to 4.0%.
The improvement in economic conditions is being led by the US, where GDP growth is expected to be 2.3% in 2002 (possibly higher, says the report) and rising to 3.4% in 2003.
In Europe, where the growth rate never fell as sharply as the US, and where the policy response was less aggressive, growth is expected to pick up a little later, reaching 1.5% this year and 2.9% in 2003.
A global recession? Despite being pushed on the question of whether 2001 represented a global recession, the IMF’s economic counsellor and director of research, Kenneth Rogoff, last September said that the Fund does not possess an official definition of ‘global recession’.
Rogoff this week said that this has been further looked into and that the IMF has concluded that 2001 just fell short of what it would term a global recession; by comparison, the years 1975, 1982 and 1991 did, officially, constitute global recessions.
However, he acknowledges that this is a somewhat grey term: “[It] is a matter of semantics whether one wants to call 2001 the mildest global recession in recent years, or the most severe downturn that was not a full-fledged recession.”
