The president of the World Bank, David Malpass, announced this Monday that the World Bank (WB) is going to raise the world growth forecasts for this 2023 three tenths, to 2%, thanks to the better prospects for China after the end of the lockdowns due to the pandemic.
(Read: Chilean economy contracted 0.5% in February).
“It’s an upward revision and is partly due to better prospects in China after they lifted the lockdown.“, said the American in a talk with the media prior to the opening of the spring meetings of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
After the end of the zero covid policy, China is expected to grow 5.1% this year, eight tenths more than the figure estimated last January. The rise in the global growth forecast is also due to the fact that “advanced economies are doing a little better than they appeared in January“and, for example, in the United States and Europe “consumption has held up better than expected,” explained Malpass.
(See also: US economy grew 2.1% in 2022).
However, specified the president of the World Bank, which is expected “slower activity in the second half of 2023“. In the coming months there could be a rise in the price of oil, he pointed out, and it is also necessary to closely observe “the challenge of the change in the perception of banking health”, after the bankruptcies of several entities.
Malpass will inaugurate today, together with the director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, the spring meetings in which ministers and managers of financial institutions will participate to discuss the state of the world economy and the main future challenges. These will be the last meetings as WB president for Malpass, who a few weeks ago announced his intention to leave office on June 30 to pursue new professional challenges.
(See: Maximum global GDP growth would have the lowest level by 2030).
In them, President Malpass noted, One of the main issues that will be dealt with is the debt and the need for its restructuring and the change towards a system to make it more transparent. “The ultimate goal here is that if the poorest countries get into debt in commercial terms, the benefits are known and evaluated and go to the people of the country, and that has not been happening,” he said.
In your opinion, debt overhang is paralyzing many of the countries and investment in them. “If we think about what is best for advanced economies and also for China is to have a restructuring that allows new investment to come into countries and therefore creates new markets,” he said.
(Read: Eurozone GDP slows down and that of the EU as a whole fell 0.1%).
EFE
