India’s economy, which declined by 7.3 per cent due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is presumed to rise by 9.5 per cent in 2021 and 8.5 per cent in 2022, according to the latest predictions released by the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday.
India’s growth projection published by the latest World Economic Outlook persists unaltered from its earlier WEO (World Economic Outlook) update of July this summer. Still, it is a three-percentage point in 2021, and a 1.6 percentage point decline from its April projections.
According to the newest WEO update, published ahead of the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, the world is assumed to expand at 5.9 per cent in 2021 and 4.9 per cent in 2022.
The United States is predicted to advance at six per cent this year and 5.2 per cent the following year.
On the other hand, the IMF said, China is predicted to grow at 8 per cent in 2021 and 5.6 per cent in 2022. Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist of the IMF, said that compared to their July forecast, the global growth projection for 2021 has been revised down marginally to 5.9 per cent and is unchanged for 2022 at 4.9 per cent.
“The outlook for the low-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,” she said.
“Partially offsetting these changes, projections for some commodity exporters have been upgraded on the back of rising commodity prices. Pandemic-related disruptions to contact-intensive sectors have caused the labour market recovery to lag the output recovery in most countries significantly,” the Indian-American economist added.
Witnessing that the severe alteration of economic prospects across countries endures a significant concern. She said aggregate output for the advanced economy group is assumed to retrieve its pre-pandemic trend path in 2022 and pass it by 0.9 per cent in 2024.
Remarking that a critical shared factor behind these complicated trials is the sustained hold of the pandemic on global society, Gopinath said that the first policy preference is to vaccinate at least 40 per cent of the population in every country by end-2021 and 70 per cent by mid-2022.
Simultaneously, concluding the USD 20 billion surpluses grant funding gap for testing, therapeutics and genomic surveillance will save lives and keep vaccines suitable for use. Looking forward, vaccine producers and high-income countries should encourage the enlargement of regional generation of COVID-19 vaccines in emerging countries through funding and technology transfers, she said.
Gopinath said another critical global preference is the necessity to curb the growth in global temperatures and restrain the growing conflicting impacts of climate change. More determined pledges will need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions at the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.
