The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will once again reduce its forecast for global economic growth for 2009 to between 1 and 1.5 percent, as economic conditions continue to worsen, said IMF official Axel Bertuch-Samuels on Sunday.
In November, the IMF estimated global growth for this year at 2.2 percent, šwhich was 0.8 percent lower than the estimate from October."It will be revised to 1 to 1.5 percent in 2009, šwhich is significant", said Bertuch-Samuels, Deputy Director of the IMF’s Monetary Policy and Capital Markets Department, on the sidelines of a conference in the United Arab Emirates. "Economic conditions worldwide have deteriorated in recent months, consumer and producer confidence has fallen to levels not seen in decades, and economic activity has sharply declined," he added, noting that 2009 will pose a huge challenge for the global economy.(H)
