International Monetary Fund report: Growth this year is 2% and inflation is 2.7%

The International Monetary Fund expects continued rapprochement with the Eurozone, with growth of 2% for this year and 1.9% for 2025 for Greece, in its bi-monthly report on the economic prospects of its member states (Global Economic Prospects), which was published to the public. Today in the context of the spring meeting of the Fund and the World Bank.

The Fund's expectations are lower than the Ministry of Economy's estimates of 2.3% this year and 2.5% in 2025, but the gap has narrowed significantly after amending the initial 2024 budget estimate for growth this year to 2.9%.

However, it is more than double for this year and higher for 2025 than the Fund's forecast for euro zone growth of 0.8% in 2024 and 1.5% next year.

Therefore, Greece will continue to converge steadily in terms of income with Europe.

At the same time, the Fund's expectations are quite close to those contained in the report on the assessment of the situation of Greece based on Article IV of the Statute that it published at the end of January. The Fund then expected Greece to grow by 2.1% this year and 1.6% in 2025.

At the same time, the Fund expects inflation to slow to 2.7% this year and 2.1% in 2025. The outlook is marginally better than the inflation expectations of 2.8% and 2.2%, respectively, that it announced three months ago in the report based on Article IV. .

The unemployment

At the critical level of unemployment, the Fund expects a steady decline in the escalation for this year and in 2025. In particular, the Fund expects unemployment to decline from 10.9% that closed in 2023 to 9.7% for this year and to 8.7% in 2023. 2025, the IMF indicates The International Bank indicated in its notes that its own expectations for reducing unemployment may differ from those of the member state, which is Greece.

In the previous IMF report, unemployment forecasts were marginally better, from the 10.6% it expected for 2023, it was estimated to fall to 9.2% for 2024 and 8.5% for 2025.

The current account balance

Finally, the IMF also sees a significant correction in the critical size of the current account deficit. Specifically, from the 6.9% of GDP it closed in 2023, in the wake of lower energy prices, the Fund expects a slight slowdown for this year to 6.5% of GDP and a greater slowdown to 5.3% of GDP at the end of 2025.

The report stressed in its general comments that these forecasts are at serious risk of a new escalation in the Middle East, which could lead to higher food, energy and transportation costs, leading to a new period of high inflation.