IMF forecasts a ‘soft landing’

The IMF sees the global economy headed for a ‘soft landing’ scenario but warns that leaders should be preparing for future shocks and challenges, spokesperson Julie Kozack told reporters Thursday in Washington, DC. (Jan. 11)

“So we’ve had a relatively resilient global economy so far. We expect that resilience to continue into 2024. At the same time, inflation is coming down. Labor markets continue to be, uh, resilient. Of course, the news is not all good because this resilience with growth, um, around hovering around 3% both last year and over the expected over the medium-term, that’s much lower than previous global average growth rates, which were about 3.8%. So we do have work to do to lift global growth, especially over the medium term,” said Kozack at her first briefing of 2024.

The Fund will update its global growth forecast on January 30^th in the World Economic Outlook report, set to be unveiled in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Kozack said that Egyptian officials met with executives at the IMF this week to discuss economic reforms amidst the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza.

“Our team is in discussions with the authorities on a set of policies that would support completion of the first and second reviews of the EFF that Egypt has with the Fund. This strong engagement that we’ve had with the authorities has helped achieve important progress in the discussions, and we do expect those discussions to continue in the coming weeks to operationalize the key policy priorities.” said Kozack.

A team of IMF officials is also in Sri Lanka to discuss the Fund program with that country, Kozack announced.

“Program performance, you know, has been satisfactory as signaled by the completion of the review and the next steps are the mission that is currently on the ground right now. This mission is a staff visit. It is kind of a fact finding or technical mission. And the goal of this mission is to discuss recent developments and to follow up on program targets and commitments,” Kozack explained.

Finally, Kozack said that Fund’s executive board has completed the third review of Mozambique’s three-year loan program, allowing for an immediate disbursement to Maputo of about $60.7 million.

“Program performance, you know, has been satisfactory as signaled by the completion of the review and the next steps are the mission that is currently on the ground right now. This mission is a staff visit. It is kind of a fact finding or technical mission. And the goal of this mission is to discuss recent developments and to follow up on program targets and commitments,” said Kozack.

A full transcript from the briefing can be found at IMF.org