The International Monetary Fund is now less optimistic about the global economy for 2021, but still sees reasonable growth over the medium term.
In its World Economic Outlook, published Tuesday, the Fund said it expects global gross domestic product to grow by 5.9% this year — 0.1 percentage point lower than its July estimate. For next year, the IMF has kept its global growth projection at 4.9%.
The revised outlook for this year comes amid supply chain issues in advanced economies and a worsening health situation in emerging countries.
"This modest headline revision masks large downgrades for some countries," Gita Gopinath, chief economist at the IMF, said in an accompanying blogpost.
"The outlook for the low-income developing country group has darkened considerably due to worsening pandemic dynamics. The downgrade also reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group, in part due to supply disruptions."
The United States is one of the countries in this position; the IMF has cut its growth estimates for the country this year by 1 percentage point to 6%. The growth outlooks for Spain and Germany were also cut by 0.5 percentage points each, and Canada's was reduced by 0.6 percentage points.
Beyond 2022, however, the IMF forecasts a moderate global growth level of 3.3% over the medium term.
