IMF head: global growth prospects rising but dangers remain

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the 190-nation International Monetary Fund says prospects for global growth have brightened since January, helped by a $1.9 trillion U.S. rescue package. But she warns that uneven progress in fighting the pandemic could jeopardize the economic gains.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Tuesday that when the IMF releases its updated economic forecast next week, it will show the global economy growing at a faster pace than the 5.5% gain it projected at the start of the year.

In remarks hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, she said that the $1.9 trillion support package that President Joe Biden signed into law on March 11 along with rising confidence from increased vaccinations in many advanced economies were primary reasons for the forecast upgrade.

Georgieva said that governments around the globe had taken extraordinary actions over the past year including providing a combined $16 trillion in support and a massive injection of liquidity into the financial sector by the world's central banks. Without this prompt response, Georgieva said the last year's downturn would have been three times worse.

But she said economic prospects are “diverging dangerously” with the global economy now in a multi-speed recovery increasingly powered by two engines — the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies, while other countries fall behind.

Georgieva said the world faced “extremely high uncertainty” with so much depending on the path of the pandemic with new strains of the virus now holding back growth prospects, especially in Europe and Latin America.

Private economists are forecasting that the U.S. economy could grow by 6% to 7% this year, which would be the best performance since 1984. But Georgieva said...