WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has sharply lowered its growth forecast for the United States due to a more aggressive policy of raising interest rates from the Federal Reserve, while judging that the country will “narrowly” avoid recession.
In its annual assessment of US economic policy, released on Friday, the IMF now says it expects US gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 2.9% in 2022, down from a previous estimate of 3.7% in April. . For 2023, the IMF forecasts growth of 1.7%, (against 2.3%), and for 2024, growth of 0.8%.
Last October, before new epidemic waves of COVID-19 linked to the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which caused an increase in the prices of energy and products food, the IMF forecast for the United States a growth rate of 5.2% in 2022.
“We are aware that the path is narrow to avoid a recession in the United States,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement, noting that these projections carry a high degree of uncertainty.
(Report David Lawder and Andrea Shalal; French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
