The World Bank has voiced concern that the world may be on the verge of a global recession in the early months of 2023. This is a result of central banks raising interest rates to battle inflation simultaneously around the world. The three largest economies in the world—the United States, China, and the EU—were also noted to be slowing down significantly, and the report noted that even a “moderate blow to the global economy over the next year might tip it into recession.”
Due to supply shortages and increasing demand as nations recovered from the pandemic, inflation has been rising at the quickest rate in decades. This year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine and Covid lockdowns in China has made the situation even worse.
Global growth is slowing rapidly
It claimed that consumer confidence had already fallen more drastically than in the years leading up to past global recessions and that the world economy was currently experiencing its worst decline after a post-recession rebound since 1970.
President of the World Bank David Malpass stated that “global growth is slowing rapidly, with further slowing probably as more nations fall into recession,” expressing concern that these trends would continue and have disastrous effects on emerging markets and developing economies.
The study indicates that if supply disruptions and labor market pressures don’t abate, those interest rate hikes could leave the global core inflation rate (excluding energy) at roughly 5% in 2023, which would be near twice the five-year average prior to the pandemic. The report’s model suggests that central banks may need to increase interest rates by an extra 2 percentage points in order to reduce global inflation to a rate that is consistent with their aims. If financial market stress were to accompany this, global GDP growth would fall to 0.5 percent in 2023—a per-capita contraction of 0.4 percent that would technically qualify as a worldwide recession.
However, it is projected to lower global GDP growth to 0.5% in 2023, or a contraction of 0.4% in terms of per-capita income, which would match the formal criteria for a worldwide recession, it continued.
Malpass argued that authorities should now concentrate on increasing production, including initiatives to attract more investment and achieve productivity gains.
Ayhan Kose, vice president of the World Bank, stated that the recent tightening of monetary and fiscal policy would aid in reducing inflation, but the highly synchronized character of the actions could exacerbate the issue and steepen the downturn in the global economy.