IMF keeps India’s growth forecast at 7.2% for 2017-18

In latest update of World Economic Outlook released by International Monetary Fund (IMF) on July 24, 2017, economic growth outlook for India has been kept unchanged at 7.2% in 2017-18 and 7.7% in 2018-19.

Highlights of IMF’s World Economic Outlook Update:

For Indian economy, the report remarked that despite of slowdown following the demonetisation initiative; growth for 2016 at 7.1% was higher than anticipated due to strong government spending in the first part of the year.

• While the IMF has retained India’s growth estimate as provided in the World Economic Outlook (WEO) in April 2017, in the case of China, the forecast has been marginally raised to 6.7% in 2017 and 6.4% in 2018 from earlier projections of 6.6%.
• India however remains the fastest growing major economy in the region and the world and will continue to grow faster than China in 2017 as well as in 2018.
• Inflation in advanced economies remains subdued and generally below target and has been declining in several emerging economies such as Brazil, India and Russia too.
• Economic activity in advanced, emerging and developing economies is forecasted to accelerate in 2017 to 2% and 4.6%, respectively.
• IMF has kept its outlook for global growth unchanged at 3.5% in 2017 and 3.6% in 2018. 

IMF lowered forecasts for US, UK economic growth this year

IMF has cut its growth forecast for the UK economy this year after a weak performance in the first three months of 2017.

• In its first downgrade for the United Kingdom (UK) since the EU referendum in June 2016, the IMF said it expected the British economy to expand by 1.7% this year, 0.3 points lower than the previous forecast in April 2017.
• IMF has also lowered its growth forecast for US to 2.1% in 2017 as well as in 2018. Earlier, it had forecasted U.S. economic growth at 2.3% and 2.5% respectively, in 2017 and 2018.
• Failure of Trump administration to deliver tax cuts has lead to the lowering of US growth forecast.

About World Economic Outlook Report:

World Economic Outlook(WEO) is published by the International Monetary Fund.

• It is published biannually and is also updated twice in between.
• It provides short term and medium term growth projections for global economy as a whole and also for 180 countries separately.
• It provides forecasts for key macroeconomic indicators viz. inflation, fiscal deficit and trade deficit.