Georgieva recalculates: Argentina will grow more | The Fo …

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that Argentina’s economy will recover 5.8% this year and that in 2022, it would increase by 2.5 percent, even though he considered that there were “challenges to be met in order to achieve macroeconomic stabilization”. The improvement is almost a point and a half higher than the last estimate.

In his last Economic Outlook Report (WEO, for its acronym in English) presented at the spring meetings, the multilateral body estimated that the country’s economy will recover this year just over half of what was lost in 2020 (-10% ) due to the pandemic and the crisis, and you will see your current account balance increase by 2.3%.

Are latest estimates They improved on recent projections of January 2021, when the Fund estimated Argentina to grow by almost 4.5% during that period. At the same time, the recovery will allow the unemployment rate to drop from 11.4% in 2020 to 10.6% in 2021 and 9.6% in 2022.

On a related note, the World Bank estimated last week that Argentina’s economy would grow by 6.4%, closer to forecasts by Economy Minister Martín Guzmán, who recently said the economy local area would recover by 7%. The 2021 budget promised an increase of just over 5.

The inflationary question

In the other corner, the IMF did not present this time inflation estimates. “For Argentina, fiscal and inflation variables are excluded from the publication for 2021-2026, since they are largely linked to the negotiations of the still ongoing program,” the agency explained in a footnote. .

The economic adviser and chief economist for research, Gita Gopinath, responsible for preparing the report, said that “Argentina, like many other countries in the region, has also had to deal with many waves of this pandemic and it should be noted that the containment measures in the most waves. most recent allowed the effect on economic activity was not as negative as expected. ”

At the same time, he stressed that “Argentina also benefits from an increase in the price of foodstuffs, since it is one of its main export products”, and said: “Of course, it There are still significant challenges, as inflation is very high. High expectations and inflation are not yet firmly anchored, and therefore there is much to be done to achieve macroeconomic stabilization. “He added that” the government has worked hard on this and we are working closely with Argentina to help forge what would be a stronger economic framework. “

A world in an economic pandemic

Globally, the IMF’s chief economist has estimated “a Recovery stronger for the global economy compared to our estimates for the month of January, with projected growth of 6% in 2021 (an increase of 0.5 percentage point) and of 4.4% in 2022 (an increase of 0.2 percentage point), after a historic contraction estimate of -3.3% in 2020. “

Despite the recovery, “the pandemic is not yet defeated and cases of the virus are accelerating in many countries”, while the world is currently experiencing “divergent growth”, he warned. This leads, he continued, to the fact that “recoveries also diverge dangerously between and within countries”.

According to Gopitah, the improvements in global growth for 2021 and 2022 are mainly due “to a considerable improvement for the United States (1.3 percentage points) which is expected to grow by 6.4% this year”.

This makes United States in the only large economy that will exceed the level of GDP forecast for 2022 in the absence of this pandemic, said the IMF team that prepared the report. Other advanced economies, including the euro area, will also rebound this year, but at a slower pace.

As, China It is the only emerging country that will experience growth of 8.4%, returning to pre-pandemic levels. In Latin America, after a sharp decline in 2020, “a multi-speed recovery is expected”.

“Growth has exceeded expectations in some of the region’s major exporting countries (for example, Argentina, Brazil, Peru) raising the forecast for 2021 to 4.6% for the region (a 1 percentage point upward revision). However, he noted that the longer-term outlook remains dependent on the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic.