Washington (AFP)
The 2020 recession had been historic.
The world economy is now recovering faster than expected from the pandemic, stimulated by robust US growth and boosted by vaccination, announced Tuesday the IMF, which is however worried about a recovery "at several speeds".
"Despite the great uncertainty about the evolution of the pandemic, we can see more and more the way out of this health and economic crisis," said Gita Gopinath, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Washington institution, which published its latest global forecasts on Tuesday at its spring meetings, now expects global gross domestic product growth of 6% this year (+0.5 points compared to its projection January), and 4.4% next year (+0.2 points).
Proof of the recovery, the volume of trade in goods and services in the world will rebound by 8.4% this year.
For the United States, which recently adopted an aid plan of 1.9 trillion dollars, growth projections for 2021 and 2022 stand at 6.4% (+1.3 point) and 3.5% respectively. (+1 point).
The world's largest economy is regaining strength thanks to an accelerated vaccination campaign - more than 3 million doses injected per day - which has eased restrictions in the restaurant, hotel and hospitality sectors and tourism.
The United States is even "the only large economy" whose 2022 GDP will exceed the forecast made before the pandemic, underlines the IMF.
And US growth could prove to be even stronger if the Biden administration succeeds in getting Congress to pass its plan to invest more than $ 2 trillion in infrastructure.
- Uneven recovery -
If the IMF welcomes the positive impact of American growth in the world, it also notes a recovery "at several speeds" with "many countries" which will not return to their level before the pandemic before 2023 , when China has already found its own in 2020.
Even within advanced countries, the gap is widening with lagging euro area countries: growth is expected to reach 4.4% this year, a pace insufficient to erase the 6.6% contraction recorded per year. past.
It is because on the Old Continent, the vaccination campaign is behind schedule.
France, whose growth is expected to reach 5.8% after a drop in GDP of 8.2%, has even had to resolve to reconfigure its population and close its schools.
Elsewhere in the world, China and India will record leaps in their GDP above the world average (+ 8.4% and + 12.5% respectively) but the Latin America and Caribbean zone will grow by only 4.6% after a 7% plunge in 2020.
Emerging countries and low-income countries are expected to suffer for a long time due to limited budgetary resources and sluggish vaccination.
- "High degree of uncertainty" -
The IMF recognizes that a "great degree of uncertainty" surrounds its global projections which could thus be better if vaccination were accelerated everywhere in the world or on the contrary, less good if the pandemic were to be prolonged because of the disease. appearance of variants of the new coronavirus.
With a desynchronized economic recovery across the world, a sharp rise in interest rates, particularly in the United States, would further weaken emerging countries, which would be faced with the increase in the cost of their debt.
Gita Gopinath recommends staying the course on monetary policy and continuing to support economies, but with "more targeted" stimulus packages.
She also said she was "in favor" of imposing a minimum global corporate tax, the day after a call to that effect from the Biden administration.
Governments are faced with large scale tax evasion and the transfer of money to tax havens, which "is of great concern to us" because it "reduces the tax base on which governments can collect revenues and spend necessary social and economic ", she explained during a press conference.
"We are therefore very much in favor of an overall minimum corporate tax," she added.
"While all eyes are on the pandemic, it is essential to make progress in resolving trade and technological tensions," Gita Gopinath also underlined.
In the future, countries will also have to focus on catching up with schooling and re-qualification of millions of workers whose jobs will have disappeared forever with this crisis.
© 2021 AFP