The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has significantly revised the estimates regarding the growth of the Romanian economy this year, from 3.1% as estimated in the autumn to 2.4%, according to the latest report “World Economic Outlook”, published on Tuesday by the international financial institution.

According to the new forecasts of the IMF, the Romanian economy will slow down from an advance of 4.8% in 2022, to 2.4% in 2023, so that next year it will accelerate to 3.7%.

Regarding inflation, the IMF forecasts that Romania will register an average annual growth of 10.5% this year, after a 13.8% advance recorded in 2022. The pace of price growth will slow down significantly only in 2024, when will be at 5.8%, according to Agerpres.

Also, regarding Romania’s current account deficit, the IMF expects only a slight reduction from 9.3% of GDP in 2022 to 7.9% of GDP in 2023 and 7.7% of GDP in 2024.

Globally, the IMF points out that preliminary signals from early 2023, according to which the world economy will achieve a soft landing by slowing inflation and maintaining the pace of growth, have disappeared in the context of inflation that has remained at a high level and recently occurred turbulence in the financial sector. Under these conditions, according to the latest WEO report published on Tuesday, the IMF slightly revised its estimates regarding the evolution of the world economy this year. The IMF’s baseline scenario is that after growing 3.4% in 2022, global economic growth will slow to 2.8% in 2023, 0.1 percentage points less than forecast in January, before rising to 3% in 2024.

Also, global inflation would decrease from 8.7% in 2022 to 7% in 2023, as a result of the drop in raw material prices. However, the IMF warns that core inflation would decrease much more slowly. In addition, the return of inflation to the target level is unlikely to happen before 2025 in most cases.