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European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said the IMF has cut its forecasts for the global economy.
“The International Monetary Fund has revised down its growth projections worldwide, except for the United States,” Lagarde told La Tribune Dimanche in an interview, according to a transcript on the ECB’s website.
The IMF is set to publish its latest outlook on Tuesday, having in July raised this year’s prediction for world growth, as well as for most major economies. It currently sees global GDP expanding 3% in both 2023 and 2024, with US output rising 1.8% and 1%.
In the runup to this week’s World Economic Outlook — published as part of the IMF’s annual meetings in Marrakesh — Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva highlighted Thursday that new numbers will show “the current pace of global growth remains quite weak — well below the 3.8% average in the two decades before the pandemic.”
“Over the medium-term, growth prospects have weakened further,” with “stark differences in growth dynamics,” she said in a speech in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. “Stronger momentum comes from the United States,” Georgieva said. “But most advanced economies are slowing down and in China economic activity is below expectations.”
Still, there are increasing odds that central banks can tame inflation without sending the global economy into recession, achieving a so-called soft landing, she said.
Asked for comment, an ECB spokesperson pointed to Georgieva’s Oct. 5 speech that referred to weaker growth prospects for the world but stronger momentum in the US.
In the Tribune interview, Lagarde — who held the IMF’s top job before taking up her current position in 2019 — also said that in battling inflation the ECB’s “goal is obviously not to create a recession” and that she’s “not pessimistic” about the euro area’s short-term outlook.
