WASHINGTON, June 24 (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 by the Federal Reserve, while judging that the country will “narrowly” avoid recession.
In its annual assessment of US economic policy, released Friday, the IMF now says it expects US gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 2.9% in 2022, up 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 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a spike in energy and commodity prices 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,” said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in a statement, stressing that these projections included a high degree of uncertainty. (Report David Lawder and Andrea Shalal; French version Jean-Stphane Brosse)
