"In sub-Saharan Africa, growth is expected to increase from a predicted 3.4 percent in 2023 to 3.8 percent in 2024 and 4 percent in 2025, with the negative effects of climate shocks continuing and problems in the supply chains of supplies to gradually improve", reads the World Economic Outlook, released this Tuesday in Washington as part of the Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, which began on Monday.
The forecast, adds the IMF, is practically the same as that of the report on Africa, released in October, and the update in January, "as the downward revision of Angola's growth due to the contraction of the oil sector is compensated, in general, for upward revision in Nigeria".
The document presented this Tuesday does not present any further explanations about the new projections for Africa, as this is reserved for the report on the region, which will be released on Friday, but it is still known that Equatorial Guinea should return to positive growth this year, with an expansion of 0.5 percent, but will enter the red again in 2025, the year in which the economy is expected to contract by 4.6 percent, after having fallen by 5.9 percent in 2023.
With regard to inflation, Angola is expected to see prices rise by 22 percent this year and 12.8 percent next year, after the average rise of 13.6 percent last year.
Compared to October 2023 forecasts, the IMF maintains the same forecast for 2024 and removes a tenth from the growth forecast for sub-Saharan Africa next year, significantly worsening the data for Angola.
In October, the IMF predicted that Angola would grow 1.3 percent in 2023, and now points to an expansion of just 0.9 percent, while for this year it predicted 3.3 percent, and now estimates 2.6 percent.
The IMF improved its global growth forecast by a tenth to 3.2 percent this year, a rate it also expects for next year.
The institution led by Kristalina Georgieva predicts that global growth, estimated at 3.2 percent in 2023, will continue at the same pace in 2024 and 2025.
The forecast for 2024 was revised upwards by 0.1 percentage point (pp.) compared to the January report and by 0.3 (pp.) compared to October last year.
