Daily Times

It’s not surprise, given the way supply side pressures and semiconductor shortage, etc, have held back leading economies, that the IMF has revised global growth for this year down from 6pc to 5.9pc. It looks like a minor change, but as the IMF itself clarified, it “masks large downgrades for some countries”. The pandemic is still to blame for most if not all the problems faced by the global economy as it struggles to rebound and get back to pre-Covid levels aggregate demand, production and trade. The biggest and most common threat is one of inflation, which is why the Fund’s chief economist urged central bankers to remain vigilant as she briefed about its latest estimates.

Interestingly, international demand over the last year or so has been spearheaded not by return of growth to the US economy, but rather the furious expansion of China. Lately, though, the Middle Kingdom’s energy problems, and the likely implosion of its huge real estate sector because of all the troubles encountered by Evergrande, which threaten to spill over into other sectors as well as other economies, seem to have taken the wind out of the sails of all China bulls in international financial markets. So there is definitely trouble ahead for the anemic global recovery.

It really remains to be seen if downside pressures will settle at the 0.1pc downward revision of the growth of the world economy. That is because one too many variants of the pandemic emerged in the time that governments laced their economies with stimulus programs which did manage to spur inflation even if growth didn’t spike for too long. As a result whatever growth was achieved now seems to be petering out, albeit very slowly, while there’s no easy way to control prices. Pakistan is a very good example of this phenomenon. We have had high inflation since well before the pandemic, particularly in food items with very stiff demand, and if growth does not rise to expectation then low growth and high prices will eat into lives and livelihoods of all classes except the super-rich.

The best that can be done, then, is to keep a very close eye on the spread of the newest variant of the coronavirus while making sure that all important deficits do not bloat too much by the time the storm passes. Meantime, we must brace for the slowdown in growth, just like the rest of the world. *