World Bank projects smooth global recovery

THE global economy, says the World Bank, is on course for a smooth recovery in 2014 as advanced economies that have healed from the wounds of the global financial crisis gain speed and pull along emerging economies that have slowed.

But things could turn out very differently, the Bank says in its latest Global Economic Prospects report published yesterday, if monetary "tapering" by the US Federal Reserve meets with "abrupt market adjustment". Then, emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere could suffer severe shocks.

The report takes the more benign outlook as its "baseline" scenario and suggests that global GDP growth will firm from 2.4 per cent in 2013 to 3.2 per cent this year, stabilising at 3.4 per cent and 3.5 per cent in 2015 and 2016, respectively.