IMF to keep 2021 global growth forecast at 6%: Managing Director

On July 21, 2021, The International Monetary Fund has said that it is estimating that global growth for 2021 will be about 6%, the same that was forecasted in April, but some countries are growing faster and others more slowly.

Key Points

• Kristalina Georgieva, IMF’s Managing Director, said that economic recovery will be truncated unless the vaccination pace for COVID-19 picks up.
• In the month of April IMF had projected that global growth for 2021 would hit 6%, a rate which is unseen since the 1970s as global economies start to recover.
• Georgieva stated that the lack of access to vaccines in the developing countries along with rapid spread of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus was threatening to slow the economic recovery’s momentum.
• The next World Economic Outlook forecast update is scheduled to be released by the International Monetary Fund on 27th July, but the IMF’s projected global growth rate of 6% for this year would remain.
• Some countries are now projected to grow faster while some are projected to grow slower.
• IMF-World Bank goal was to provide 50 billion USD to countries to step up their COVID vaccination rates but it is being estimated that it will likely require more than the initially envisioned 11 billion doses as booster shots may now be necessary to arrest the spread of the virus, and also to cover vaccine losses in some developing countries lacking cold storage facilities.

About International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is headquartered in Washington, D.C and was formed in the year 1944. It is an international financial institution that consists of 200 countries working towards global monetary and financial cooperation. Kristalina Georgieva is the current MD of IMF and the Chief Economist is Gita Gopinath.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2021