Blog post

New IMF growth forecasts: EU revised downward, once again

The IMF published its new World Economic Outlook today (see the report here and the database here). Once again, euro-area’s outlook has been revised d

Publishing date
14 October 2014
Authors
Zsolt Darvas

The IMF published its new World Economic Outlook today (see the report and the database ). Once again, euro-area’s outlook has been revised downward, but this is not the case for the USA and Japan:

Growth forecasts at different dates (2007=100) (click to enlarge)

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Source: calculations based on different editions of the IMF World Economic Outlook. Note: the first vertical dashed line in each panel indicates 2007, the second 2012.

The next figure shows data for each EU country, including the soon-to-be member Croatia. There were only six countries that did not face downward revision from October 2012 to April 2013: Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Latvia and Lithuania. The other 22 countries faced smaller or larger downward revisions from the October 2012 outlooks, which, by the way, were not really bright for most.

It is high time to address Europe’s growth problem.

Growth forecasts at different dates (2007=100) (click to enlarge)

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Source: calculations based on different editions of the IMF World Economic Outlook. Note: EU15: EU members before 2004; EU11: EU members joined in 2004=2007 except Cyprus (the current WEO does not include forecasts for Cyprus). The first vertical dashed line in each panel indicates 2007, the second 2012.

Read more on the IMF's forecasts

Looking past the (West’s) end of the nose

The global economy’s Groundhog Day

Chart: IMF forecasts euro area inflation to stay well below 2% target for years to come

The IMF’s false confession

About the authors

  • Zsolt Darvas

    Zsolt Darvas is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel and part-time Senior Research Fellow at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He joined Bruegel in 2008 as a Visiting Fellow, and became a Research Fellow in 2009 and a Senior Fellow in 2013.

    From 2005 to 2008, he was the Research Advisor of the Argenta Financial Research Group in Budapest. Before that, he worked at the research unit of the Central Bank of Hungary (1994-2005) where he served as Deputy Head.

    Zsolt holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Corvinus University of Budapest where he teaches courses in Econometrics but also at other institutions since 1994. His research interests include macroeconomics, international economics, central banking and time series analysis.

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