The war slows down the world economy
by "significantly worsening" its prospects.
The invasion of Ukraine is in fact added to a pandemic still in progress and rising inflation, creating a mix that forces the International Monetary Fund to make a decisive cut in its growth estimates.
World GDP is expected to rise by only 3.6% this year, almost one percentage point lower than the January forecasts.
With the exception of
Ukraine and Russia,
which will experience contractions of 35% and 8.5% respectively this year,
Euroland is paying the heaviest price of the war.
with growth that stops at 2.8% in 2022, or 1.1 percentage points less than in January, and at 2.3% in 2023 (-0.2).
To weigh on the slowdown in the euro area are mainly
Italy and Germany,
the two countries most dependent on Russian energy.
For Italy, the Fund revises its estimates for 2022 and 2023 downwards, with GDP expected to grow this year by 2.3%, -1.5 percentage points less than the January forecasts and 0.8 points more. less than the 3.1% indicated by the Italian government in Def.
Then next year growth will drop again to 1.7% (-0.5 points on previous estimates, 0.7 on those of the Italian government).
A slowdown that will continue, with growth that slowly decreases and eventually reaches + 0.5% in 2027. Despite the slowdown, the Italian unemployment rate is expected to drop from 9.5% in 2021 to 9.3% in 2022, a figure with which the country still remains above the European average.
The deficit is also down, expected this year at 6% after reaching 7.2% in 2021.
However, Italy is not the only one to slow down
.
All the other major European economies do it, including
Great Britain, and so do the United States and China,
where growth has been revised downwards due to Covid and the imposed lockdowns.
In the States, the slowdown is partly due to the lack of approval of part of Joe Biden's economic agenda and the gallop of inflation, which prompted the Fed to open an aggressive cycle of rate hikes.
Squeezes that, according to the Fund, are "necessary" and more "urgent" because of the war.
The conflict has accelerated the price rush and now, Washington experts admit,
inflation is a "clear danger"
which complicates the action of the central banks involved and seek the delicate balance between price containment and growth.
"Inflation will remain high for longer than expected," the IMF observes without hiding its concern over the rush in energy and food prices.
The latter gallop that risks - warns the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen - to slip 10 million people into poverty.
The food emergency as well as the other economic repercussions of the war will be one of the themes at the center of the G20 of finance ministers and central bank governors, expected in the next few hours in Washington.
Yellen will boycott some G20 meetings where Russia is present, while avoiding the risk that Moscow dictates and conditions the work.
