World Bank revises upwards energy-price forecasts for 2017

Tokyo

THE World Bank has raised its 2017 forecast of the price of a barrel of crude oil to US$55 a barrel, up from this year's US$53.

It also expects a "solid rise in energy prices led by oil" next year, it said in the latest edition of its Commodity Markets Outlook report.

The revised forecast is in line with what oil analysts elsewhere are predicting and suggests that positive momentum in energy prices could translate into general inflationary pressures in the medium term.

John Baffes, senior economist and lead author of the Commodity Markets Outlook, said as he introduced the report: "We expect a solid rise in energy pric…