World's top finance officials worry about global growth
Reuters/Andrew Yates
LIMA,
Peru — The world’s policy makers are searching for new engines of
economic growth. They are finding few that aren’t sputtering.
At the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting here, top finance officials in recent days confronted an increasingly troubling reality as they searched for ways to pull the global economy out of a rut.
“This is a pretty unforgiving environment,” said Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. “It’s not a strong global economy.”
The
most powerful engines since the global financial crisis—China, Brazil
and other emerging markets—are slowing or contracting as they strain
their capacity to expand without major overhauls to their economies. Big
advanced economies are stuck with weak growth and little prospect of
accelerating sharply.
International officials are bracing for the implications of years of sluggish growth. Emerging economies that managed to dramatically reduce poverty in the past decade now are struggling to maintain social gains, while policy makers in developed countries struggle to enact policy overhauls to breathe new life into their economies.
“There’s a great sense of unease,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s deputy prime minister and the former chairman of the IMF’s policy committee. “That sense of unease explains why globally, almost everywhere, investment is much weaker than we’d expect.”
Read an extended version of this story on WSJ.com
At the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting here, top finance officials in recent days confronted an increasingly troubling reality as they searched for ways to pull the global economy out of a rut.
“This is a pretty unforgiving environment,” said Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. “It’s not a strong global economy.”
International officials are bracing for the implications of years of sluggish growth. Emerging economies that managed to dramatically reduce poverty in the past decade now are struggling to maintain social gains, while policy makers in developed countries struggle to enact policy overhauls to breathe new life into their economies.
“There’s a great sense of unease,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s deputy prime minister and the former chairman of the IMF’s policy committee. “That sense of unease explains why globally, almost everywhere, investment is much weaker than we’d expect.”
Read an extended version of this story on WSJ.com
