IMF nudges up 2023 economic outlook but warns of slowing global growth ahead

The International Monetary Fund has slightly upgraded its outlook for global growth this year on the back of resilient service sector activity in the first quarter and a strong labor market, the lender said Tuesday.

But despite the mildly better economic outlook, global growth is expected to slow to three percent this year and then stay there, held down by weak growth among the world’s advanced economies, the IMF announced in a new report.

“We’re not out of the woods yet and growth remains on the low side,” IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told AFP in an interview ahead of the report’s publication.

The global growth forecast for this year was raised by 0.2 percentage points from the IMF’s last forecast in April, putting the world economy on track for three percent growth in both 2023 and 2024.

This is down from global economic growth of 6.3 percent in 2021,…