Citing Russia's war, IMF cuts global growth forecast to 3.6 per cent

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The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday downgraded the outlook for the world economy this year and next, blaming Russia's war in Ukraine for disrupting global commerce, pushing up oil prices, threatening food supplies, and increasing uncertainty already heightened by the coronavirus and its variants. The 190-country lender cut its forecast for global growth to 3.6 per cent this year, a steep falloff from 6.1 per cent last year and from the 4.4 per cent growth it had expected for 2022 back in January.

It also said it expects the world economy to grow 3.6 per cent again next year, slightly slower than the 3.8 per cent it forecast in January. The war — and the darkening outlook — came just as the global economy appeared to be shaking off the impact of the highly infectious omicron variant. “The war will slow economic growth and increase inflation," IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters on Tuesday.

Now, the IMF expects Russia's economy — battered by sanctions — to shrink 8.5 per cent this year and Ukraine's 35 per cent. U.S. economic growth is expected to drop to 3.7 per cent this year from 5.7 per cent in 2021, which had been the fastest growth since 1984. The new forecast marks a downgrade from the 4 per cent the IMF had predicted at the beginning of the year.

Hobbling U.S. growth this year will be Federal Reserve interest rate increases, meant to combat resurgent inflation, and an economic slowdown in key American trading partners. Europe, heavily dependent on Russian energy, will bear the brunt of the economic fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war. For the 19 countries that share the euro currency, the IMF forecasts collective growth of 2.8 per cent in 2022, down sharply from the 3.9 per cent it expected in January and from 5.3 per cent last year.

The IMF expects the growth of the Chinese economy, the world's second biggest, to decelerate to 4.4 per cent this year from 8.1 per cent in 2021. Beijing's zero-COVID strategy has meant draconian lockdowns in bustling commercial cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Some commodity-exporting countries, benefiting from the rising price of raw materials, are likely to defy the trend toward slower growth. For example, the IMF raised its growth forecast for oil producer Nigeria — to 3.4 per cent this year from the 2.7 per cent the fund said it expected back in January.

The world economy had bounced back with surprising strength from 2020's brief but brutal coronavirus recession. But the rebound presented problems of its own: Caught by surprise, businesses scrambled to meet a surge in customer orders, which overwhelmed factories, ports, and freight yards. The result: long shipping delays and higher prices.

The IMF forecasts a 5.7 per cent jump in consumer prices in the world's advanced economies this year, the most since 1984. In the United States, inflation is running at a four-decade high.

Central banks are raising interest rates to counter rising prices, a move that could choke off economic growth. By driving up prices of oil, natural gas, and other commodities, the Russia-Ukraine war has made the task of fighting inflation while preserving the economic recovery even trickier.

The conflict also has “triggered the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II,'' the IMF noted, and cut supplies and raised prices of fertilizer and grain produced in Russia and Ukraine, threatening food security in Africa and in the Middle East. In a speech last week, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned of the threat of “more hunger, more poverty, and more social unrest.'' 

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