site.btaIMF Managing Director: War in Ukraine Slows Down Global Economy, May Fragment It

The war in Ukraine is hitting global growth, prompting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cut its global growth estimates for both 2022 and 2023, as higher food and energy prices pressure fragile economies, Reuters quoted the Fund's Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva as saying in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

Georgieva said in a "curtain-raiser" speech for next week's IMF and World Bank spring meetings that the Fund would downgrade its growth outlooks for 143 economies representing 86 per cent of global economic output. She added that most countries will maintain positive growth.

According to Georgieva, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is dealing a massive setback to countries struggling to recover from the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic. "To put it simply, we are facing a crisis on top of a crisis," she said in remarks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "In economic terms, growth is down and inflation is up. In human terms, people's income are down and hardship is up," Reuters quoted her as saying.

The IMF Managing Director also warned of a major new complication, the fragmentation of the global economy into geopolitical blocs, with differing trade and technology standards, payment systems and reserve currencies.