UN forecasts world economic growth of 2.3% in 2023, 2.5% in 2024

GLOBAL economic growth is projected to be 2.3 per cent in 2023, up 0.4 percentage points from a January forecast, and the prediction for 2024 has dropped 0.2 percentage points to 2.5 per cent, according to a United Nations (UN) report released on Tuesday (May 16).

“Despite this uptick, the growth rate is still well below the average growth rate in the two decades before the pandemic of 3.1 per cent,” said the World Economic Situation and Prospects report issued by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The UN forecasts are less than the International Monetary Fund, which said earlier this year that global growth would fall to 2.9 per cent in 2023 from 3.4 per cent in 2022 and for 2024 would pick up slightly to 3.1 per cent.

The UN said while the outlook for the United States, European Union and China had improved, “for many developing countries, growth prospects have deteriorated amid tightening credit conditions and rising costs of external financing”.

“The least developed countries are forecast to grow by 4.1 per cent in 2023 and 5.2 per cent in 2024, far below the 7 per cent growth target set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” the UN report said.

It forecast US growth of 1.1 per cent in 2023 – up from 0.4 per cent forecast in January; EU growth of 0.9 per cent in 2023 – up from 0.2 per cent; and Chinese growth of 5.3 per cent – up from 4.8 per cent. REUTERS