After years of turbulence and significant volatility in economic output, the world economy is on a more stable trajectory. Global growth performance has held up surprisingly well in the face of recent shocks, including aggressive interest rate hikes by major central banks during 2022–2023 and an escalation of conflicts with international spillovers. Robust consumer spending in several large developed and developing economies – buoyed by high levels of employment, rising real wages, and relatively healthy household balance sheets – has sustained economic resilience. In a large number of economies, inflation has slowed considerably and is approaching central bank targets, providing room for monetary easing. In most cases, economies experienced disinflation without a significant deterioration in labour market conditions or contraction in economic activity.
Against this backdrop, global growth is projected to remain steady at 2.7 per cent in both 2024 and 2025 (figure 1). This represents an upward revision by 0.3 percentage points for 2024 from the forecasts in January, which mainly reflects a better-than-expected economic performance in the United States, but also improved short-term growth prospects in other large economies, notably Brazil, India and the United Kingdom.
In 2025, an anticipated slowdown in the United States and China is expected to be offset by a pickup in growth in Canada, Japan and Europe and several large developing economies including Argentina, Brazil and South Africa.
