<The Anchor> The

International Monetary Fund, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its forecast for Korea's economic growth this year from minus 1.2% to minus 2.1%. The IMF said the economic downturn was much worse than expected, lowering its global economic growth forecast to minus 4.9%, 2 percentage points lower than two months ago.

This is reporter Kim Hye-min.

<Reporter> The

International Monetary Fund's IMF projected Korea's economic growth rate to be -2.1% this year from the global economic outlook for June.

It fell 0.9 percentage points from the -1.2% forecast in April, and according to this forecast, Korea will have the lowest growth rate since the currency crisis of -5.1% in 1998.

Global economic growth forecasts have been further lowered.

Last April, it dropped 1.9 percentage points from -3% to -4.9%.

Also, among the major countries, the United States is expected to grow -8%, Japan -5.8%, Germany -7.8%, France -12.5%, China 1%, India -4.5%.

The IMF said the recession was much worse than expected and that it was a crisis unmatched by anything else.

[Other Gopinus/IMF chief economist: Compared to the global economic outlook for April, we expect this year's economic recession to worsen and recover more slowly

next year .] Next year's global economic growth rate is US 4.5%, EU 6%, etc.

I also predicted that the Korean economy will grow 3%.

From the second half of this year, it can be recovered more rapidly through gradual economic recovery, but warned that the economic recovery may be slower due to the'second corona19 pandemic' early next year.