The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will publish its global, European and Spanish macroeconomic forecasts next week, but this Wednesday its managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, announced that the organization expects global gross domestic product (GDP) growth to stand at around 3% over the next five years, which represents the worst medium-term prospects since 1990. The data is also below the average growth of global GDP for the last 20 years, which has stood at 3 .8%
During her keynote speech at the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, Georgieva indicated that this situation “makes it even more difficult to reduce poverty, heal the economic scars of the covid crisis and provide new and better opportunities for all.”
The data is not new, since its latest projections, published in January, also showed growth of 2.9% for 2023 and 3.1% for 2024. In any case, Georgieva has emphasized that growth continues to be “weak”. » if compared with the historical record, both in the short and medium term.
In her speech, Georgieva has indicated that the objective of politicians should be to achieve a “robust” recovery in the short term while laying the foundations for “more inclusive, more sustainable and stronger” growth. Thus, she marked a series of priorities that should be followed. She has placed fighting inflation and safeguarding financial stability in the first place, since robust growth cannot be achieved without both.
In any case, Georgieva has stressed that banks are now more solid and resilient than in the 2008 crisis, although she has urged the authorities to remain vigilant in case there are hidden vulnerabilities in the banking sector or in the non-bank financial sector. .
The second priority is to improve growth prospects in the medium term. Thus, it has urged the authorities to raise productivity and growth potential through structural reforms, accelerating the digital revolution and improving the business environment.
The third priority marked by the head of the Fund is to increase international solidarity to reduce the debt problems of the poorest countries.