Global growth prospects - where we differ from consensus

As the IMF released its latest forecasts yesterday and we published our Global Economic Outlook last week, this seems a good time to take stock of how our forecasts compare with others. Overall, although the IMF’s growth forecasts were revised downwards, we think both they and the consensus forecasts are still slightly too optimistic for this year, and far too optimistic – particularly for the euro-zone – for 2013. The IMF expects world growth, at PPP exchange rates, to slow to 3.3% this year and to rebound to 3.9% in 2013. We expect growth of only 3% in both years.