(10 January 2023 – United States) The World Bank cautions global growth will slow in 2024 for a third year in a row, exacerbating poverty and excessive debt burdens for emerging markets.
The World Bank forecasts 2025 global growth tracking at 2.7 percent, marked down from a June 2023 forecast of three percent due to anticipated slowdowns among advanced economies.
Excluding the pandemic contraction of 2020, economic growth in 2024 is set to be the weakest since the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2009. The first half of the 2020s appears as if it will be the worst half-decade performance in over three decades because of the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine and consequent spikes in inflation and interest rates globally.
The World Bank asserts that a key method for boosting growth would be to accelerate the US$2.4 trillion in annual investment required to transition to clean energy and adapt to climate change.
“Without a major course correction, the 2020s will go down as a decade of wasted opportunity. Near-term growth will remain weak, leaving many developing countries, especially the poorest, stuck in a trap, with paralysing levels of debt and tenuous access to food for nearly one out of every three people” said World Bank Group Chief Economist, Indermit Gill.
“This forecast will make growth weaker in the 2020-2024 period than during the years surrounding the 2008 GFC, the late 1990s Asian financial crisis and downturns in the early 2000s” commented World Bank Deputy Chief Economist, Ayhan Kose.