By Xinhua
Washington : The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said it will lower its forecast for global economic growth for 2008, particularly for the US, due to the recent financial turmoil.
“There will be some downward revision to our growth projection, more so next year than this year,” IMF Spokesman Masood Ahmed said Thursday at a briefing.
“The downward revisions are likely to be largest for the US, but we will also see some impact in the euro area,” he added.
The spokesman declined to reveal how much the IMF expected to trim its growth estimates. The IMF will release its World Economic Outlook report in October.
In a July report, the IMF revised upward its forecast for global growth in 2007 to 5.2 percent, compared to the 4.9 percent previously estimated. It also expects world economy to expand 5.2 percent in 2008, 0.3 percentage points higher than projected in April 2007.
However, it forecast the US economy in the report to grow at a rate of 2.0 percent this year, 0.2 percentage points lower than projected in April, and at a rate of 2.8 percent next year, unchanged from its April prediction.