According to an analysis by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the world economy is recovering from the severe shocks caused by the pandemic.
But the fund sees poor and rich countries drifting further apart.
The economists stick to their last prediction that the world economy will grow by 6 percent this year.
But the composition of growth has changed.
According to the new forecast, industrialized countries will grow a little faster than previously thought, while emerging markets and poor countries will grow less.
The forecast is now weaker, especially for emerging markets in Asia.
Winand von Petersdorff-Campen
Business correspondent in Washington.
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In the coming year, the global economy could even pick up the pace of growth and achieve a plus of 4.9 percent instead of the previously forecast 4.5 percent, the IMF economists expect.
But even then, the rich nations in particular would grow, while the poor would weaken.
The IMF estimates that the pandemic has produced a per capita income loss of 2.8 percent for people in rich countries compared to the calculated income growth trend without the pandemic. In developing and emerging countries, the loss of income amounts to 6.3 percent if you exclude China with its special development. The weak growth in these countries reflects the progress made in the fight against pandemics, the IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath reports in a blog post. While around 40 percent of the population in industrialized countries has been vaccinated, emerging countries have a vaccination rate of 11 percent. Developing countries are in the low single digits.
The IMF cites the vaccination progress, especially in the western world, as the reason for raising the growth forecast as well as the lifting of restrictions on business transactions. In poor countries, however, the lack of access to vaccines and new waves of pandemics have led to a downgrade. India is particularly hard hit. Gopinath cites state aid as another reason for the growing gap between rich and poor countries. The rich countries would have loosed $ 4.6 trillion for 2021 and beyond. Additional support from the US government and the EU would have resulted in the upgrades of the growth forecast in the coming year. In the developing and emerging countries, on the other hand, most aid expired in 2020. The raw material prices provided relief,which had recently risen sharply. This rise in prices helped exporters among the developing countries in dire straits.
The Monetary Fund sees increasing price pressure in many countries because pent-up demand meets supply that is limited by shocks in global supply chains. However, the institution's economists consider inflationary tendencies to be a phenomenon that will soon disappear. It is already concentrating on a few sectors that were previously particularly hit by the pandemic. Employment levels are almost everywhere below pre-crisis levels and, finally, inflation expectations are generally well anchored. Automation also alleviates cost and price pressure.