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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its global economic growth forecast by a large margin than originally expected.

Korea's forecast was also downgraded, but the IMF analyzed that the Ukraine crisis was a direct blow to the global economy.



Correspondent Kim Jong-won from New York.



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Last year, the IMF predicted that Korea's economic growth rate for this year would be 3%, but in the newly released 'World Economic Outlook' report, it was lowered by 0.5 percentage points to 2.5%.



On the other hand, the forecast for Korea's consumer price inflation rate for this year is 4%, a nearly 1 percentage point increase from last year's 3.1%.



The forecast for economic growth has been lowered and the forecast for inflation has risen, but it is not just Korea.



The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its global economic growth forecast for this year to 3.6%, down nearly 1 percentage point from 4.4% in January three months earlier.



It is an analysis that the world economy was hit directly by the war in Ukraine.



[Pierre-Olivier Gorinzas/ IMF Chief Economist: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has significantly lowered global economic growth projections.

Even before the war, inflation was intensifying in many countries due to the imbalance between supply and demand.]



Growth projections for the United States, Japan and Europe all fell from 0.3 percentage points to up to 1.1 percentage points compared to earlier this year, and China also showed 4.4% The growth rate is expected to slow significantly compared to last year.



In particular, Russia, which is subject to economic sanctions, is expected to experience extreme negative growth, with -8.5% and -35% for Ukraine, the directly affected country.



[Krystalina Georgieva/IMF President: We have downgraded our economic growth forecasts for 143 countries.

This is equivalent to 86% of global GDP.

And all of this is due to inflation, which is getting steeper and steeper.]



The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed concern that global inflation will remain higher and longer than previously expected.