Winter is coming: The Hindu Editorial on IMF’s warning
The HinduThe International Monetary Fund, in its latest World Economic Outlook report, has retained global growth hopes for 2022 at 3.2%, and lowered next year’s projection to 2.7% from 2.9%. The year 2023 will feel like a recession for many people in the world, the Fund has cautioned, as ‘the worst is yet to come’ amid tighter monetary policies to curb stubbornly high inflation and a spiralling energy and food crisis. This is the second significant estimate after the World Bank’s 6.5% assessment that pegs India’s GDP rise below 7%, which the Reserve Bank of India and North Block mandarins are expecting this year. But private forecasters such as Nomura believe policy makers’ optimism about 2023-24 prospects may be misplaced as the global downturns’ ripple effects may be underestimated, and growth could well slip to 5.2%.