Market News
World economy to suffer weakest growth since 1960s - THE TELEGRAPH
BY Chris Price
The world economy will grow at its slowest pace since the 1960s during this decade, the World Bank has warned, amid Donald Trump’s upheaval of global trade.
The Washington-based lender slashed its growth forecast for this year by 0.4 percentage points to 2.3pc, which would be the worst year since the global financial crisis in 2008, outside global recession years.
The World Bank said that by 2027, global growth will have averaged just 2.5pc in the 2020s.
This would be the worst of any decade since in the 1960s, when the United States and the USSR were in the grip of the Cold War and the Space Race.
It warned that global growth is slowing “due to a substantial rise in trade barriers and the pervasive effects of an uncertain global policy environment”.
Chief economist Indermit Gill said: “The world economy today is once more running into turbulence. Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep.
“International discord — about trade, in particular — has upended many of the policy certainties that helped shrink extreme poverty and expand prosperity after the end of World War II.”
It comes as officials from the US and China meet in London today for a second day of talks aimed at easing trade tensions.
The FTSE 100 was on track to close at a record high amid renewed hopes about the prospects of the world’s two largest economies.
The UK’s flagship stock index climbed as much as 0.6pc to 8,883.40, which was above the record close it achieved in March.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said the talks with his Chinese counterparts were “going well” and were expected to last the whole day.
