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Tuesday, 17 April 2018

It’s global growth day

It’s Global Growth Day, ladies and gentlemen: The IMF will be releasing its the World Economic Outlook report today as the IMF and World Bank’s Spring Meetings kick off. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of the report are already out and focus on labor, employment in manufacturing, and inequality. The full document is set to be released at 3pm CLT today.

Meanwhile, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) released its 2018 forecast for world economic growth, with the IIF seeing the world economy expanding 3.5% this year and 3.4% in 2019. This is the strongest economic growth expectation since 2010 and comes despite rising global trade tensions, according to Bloomberg.

Emerging market economies are forecast to grow at a faster pace in 2019 than developed markets. The IIF sees growth in developed markets dropping to 2.2%, while emerging markets will see a slight acceleration to 5.1%. The divergence will be the largest since 2013. Africa and the Middle East are seen to grow 2.5% in 2018 and 2.9% in 2019.

Egypt will grow the fastest among Africa-Middle East countries reported in the forecast. Growth is expected to reach 5.1% in 2018, on par with the EM average and is close to the Finance Ministry’s estimate in FY2017-18 of 5.2%. The IIF sees growth in Egypt hitting 5.4% in 2019. The FY2018-19 budget sets a GDP growth target of 5.8%.

The IIF sees the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates three more times this year and assumes that the fiscal stimulus will add 30 bps to US economic growth in 2018.

Also on the international growth front: China reported overnight that its GDP grew 6.8% in the first quarter compared to the same period a year ago, meeting analyst expectations, Bloomberg reports.

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