The Romanian economy registered an advance of 1.8% in 2023, 0.8 percentage points less than previously estimated, according to the latest report on “Global Economic Prospects,” published on Tuesday by the World Bank.
The estimates regarding the evolution of the Romanian economy in 2024 and 2025, when the real GDP growth would be 3.3% and 3.8% respectively, were also revised down. Comparatively, in June of last year, the World Bank forecast for Romania an increase of 3.9% in 2024 and 4.1% in 2025, according to Agerpres.
At the global level, the World Bank warned, on Tuesday, that in 2024 the world economy will slow down for the third consecutive year. The Washington-based financial institution forecasts that global gross domestic product will register an advance of 2.4% this year, after an increase of 2.6% in 2023, one of 3% in 2022 and 6.2% in 2021 , when there was a comeback after the end of the pandemic.
That would make global economic growth between 2020 and 2024 weaker than that recorded in the years around the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the slowdown in the early 2000s, the deputy said. the chief economist at the World Bank, Ayhan Kose.
If we exclude the economic contraction caused by the pandemic in 2020, this year’s growth would be the weakest since the financial crisis of 2009, emphasizes the World Bank. The report published on Tuesday predicts that in 2025 the advance of the world economy will accelerate to 2.7%, but even in this case the figures have been revised downwards compared to the estimate of 3% in June of last year, the main reason being the slowdowns recorded by the economies advanced.
Under these conditions, the World Bank’s objective of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 seems impossible to achieve, given that economic activity is held back by geopolitical conflicts.
“In the absence of a major change in direction, the decade of 2020 will go down in history as the decade of wasted opportunities,” warned the chief economist of the World Bank Group, Indermit Gill.
The World Bank specifies that one way to stimulate economic growth, especially in emerging and developing countries, would be to accelerate the annual investments of approximately 2,400 billion dollars needed to make the transition to clean energy and adaptation to climate change.
The financial institution studied the effects of an acceleration of investments by at least 4% per year and found that it boosts the growth of per-capita incomes, production in the manufacturing and service sectors and, at the same time, improves the fiscal position of the countries. But such accelerations require comprehensive reforms, including structural reforms to increase cross-border trade and financial flows, as well as improvements in the areas of fiscal and monetary policies.