World Faces Deepening Crisis, IMF Chief Warns
The world faces a deepening economic crisis, with the slowdown in advanced economies now spreading to major emerging markets such as China, India, and Brazil, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF Managing Director, warned.He said the IMF would significantly adjust downward its forecast for world growth for 2009 when the 185-member international institution announces a revised assessment of the global economy on January 28. In an update released last November, the IMF had said that advanced economies would see a contraction in output in 2009-the first since World War II-but that growth in major emerging markets would still enable the global economy to advance by 2.2 percent in 2009.
Deteriorating outlookBut Strauss-Kahn said in an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk program, broadcast on January 21, that economic prospects had worsened over the past few months and the IMF would announce lower numbers at the January 28 press conference in Washington DC.
"So 2009 will not be a good year for the world economy, even if we see recovery at the beginning of 2010," he said.
Prospects were worse than expected not just in the United States and Europe but also in major emerging market economies such as China, India, and Brazil, which would experience very low growth compared with recent historical trends.
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http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2009/NEW012109A.htm