World Bank forecasts 2024 global growth to slow for third consecutive year
World Bank warned on Tuesday that global growth in 2024 is set to slow for a third year in a row, prolonging poverty and debilitating debt levels in many developing countries.
Hamstrung by the COVID-19 pandemic, then the war in Ukraine and ensuing spikes in inflation and interest rates around the world, the first half of the 2020s now looks like it will be the worst half-decade performance in 30 years, it added.
Global GDP is likely to grow 2.4% this year, the World Bank forecast in its latest Global Economic Prospects report. That compares to 2.6% in 2023, 3.0% in 2022 and 6.2% in 2021 when there was a rebound as the pandemic ended.
That would make growth weaker in the 2020-2024 period than during the years surrounding the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the late 1990s Asian financial crisis and downturns in the early 2000s, World Bank Deputy Chief Economist Ayhan Kose told reporters.
Excluding the pandemic contraction of 2020, growth this year is set to be the weakest since the global financial crisis of 2009, the development lender said.
It forecasts 2025 global growth slightly higher at 2.7%, but this was marked down from a June forecast of 3.0% due to anticipated slowdowns among advanced economies.
The World Bank's goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 now looks largely out of reach, with economic activity held back by geopolitical conflicts.
«Without a major course correction, the 2020s will go down as a decade of wasted opportunity,» World Bank Group Chief Economist Indermit Gill said in a statement.
«Near-term growth will remain weak, leaving many developing countries — especially the poorest — stuck in a trap, with paralyzing levels of debt
