The January update of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook (WEO) Report has been released under the title "Moderate Inflation and Stable Growth Pave the Way for a Soft Landing." While the global growth forecast for 2023 remained unchanged at 3.0% in the latest October report, it had been revised downward from 3.0% to 2.9% for the year 2024. However, the newly released report has raised the global growth expectation to 3.1% for both 2023 and 2024, maintaining a forecast of 3.2% for the year 2025. The upward revision for the 2024 forecast is attributed to a 0.6 percentage point increase for the United States and a 0.4 percentage point increase for China, impacting growth expectations positively. Nevertheless, the 2024-25 projection remains below the historical average (2000-19) of 3.8%.

In comparison to the October 2023 WEO projection for the Euro Area, the growth forecast for the year 2023 has been revised downward by 0.2 percentage points to 0.5%, and for 2024, it has been reduced by 0.3 percentage points to 0.9%. Growth expectations for Germany, Spain, and France in 2024 have seen downward revisions.

As for the Turkish economy, a growth rate of 4% is expected for the year 2023 (no change), a 3.1% growth for 2024 (a 0.1 percentage point upward revision), and a 3.2% growth for 2025 (no change).

Inflation has been evaluated to decrease faster than expected in most regions due to the resolution of supply-side issues and the impact of restrictive monetary policies. The global headline inflation is anticipated to decrease to 5.8% in 2024 and further to 4.4% in 2025, with a 0.2 percentage point downward revision in the 2025 forecast.

The outlook for global trade volume of goods and services in 2023 was previously revised downward by 1.1 percentage points in October. In the recently released report, an additional 0.5 percentage point downward revision has been made. Consequently, it is predicted that the global trade volume of goods and services will grow by 0.4% (0.5 percentage point downward revision) in 2023, 3.3% (0.2 percentage point downward revision) in 2024, and 3.6% (0.1 percentage point downward revision) in 2025, with these expectations remaining below the average growth rate of 4.9%.

Source: IMF
Post by: Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Trade