The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its World Economic Outlook for October, said on Tuesday that Nigeria as well as some commodity-exporting countries like Saudi Arabia has seen modest growths upgrades just as it trimmed its 2021 global growth forecast to 5.9 percent from the 6 percent forecast it made in July.
The IMF, which upgraded Nigeria’sgrowthto2.6percentfrom 2.5 percent in July 2021, said Nigeria’s upgrade is due to higher oil and commodity prices as it left the 2022 global growth forecast unchanged at 4.9 percent.
The IMF cut its forecast by 1.4 points for the Asean-5 grouping of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singaporeand Thailand.
“This modest headline revision, however, masks large downgrades for some countries,” theIMFsaidinthereport. “Theoutlookforthelow-income developing country group has darkened considerably due to worsening pandemic dynamics. The downgrade also reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group, in part due to supply disruptions.”
Global manufacturing activity has been slammed by shortages of key components such as semiconductors, clogged ports and a lack of cargo containers, and a labour crunch as global supply chains optimised for efficiency have struggled to return to normal after pandemic-induced shutdowns last year.
Demand-supply mismatches, fueled in part by excess savings built up in wealthy countries, have driven up prices, causing spikes in inflation. The IMF said it expects inflation to return to pre-pandemic levels next year, but warned that persistent supply disruptions risked unanchoring inflation expectations.
source: independent
