WORLD
Global economy headed for a soft landing, better days ahead: Sitharaman
- IBJ Bureau
- Oct 27, 2024
A soft-landing of the global economy, which has experienced tremendous stress over the past several years, is increasingly a possibility, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday.
Observing that better days are ahead primarily because of the coordinated action between countries and multilateral financial institutions, the finance minister at the same time sounded a note of caution that economies are not really picking up that much yet.
“The largest sense which prevailed in the two-day discussions, both of the (International Monetary) Fund and also of the World Bank, is that there will be a soft landing. The efforts by the Fund, the central banks and all institutions, governments have kept the inflation down for some meaningful period. Therefore, soft landing is increasingly a possibility,” Ms Sitharaman told a Washington DC-based global think-tank.
“Then that reasonable growth numbers will come from even the advanced economies, certainly not in the negative area. And then the coordinated action between countries to manage any supply chain shocks that have been the character of the global economy in the last, let us say, at least two years, are being faced by countries with a lot more preparedness, and therefore, the sense is we can only have better days than what we have seen in the last few years,” Ms Sitharaman said during her appearance at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think-tank.
“But with that said, all of us had to sound a note of caution because economies are not really picking up that much yet. They are all right, you see them not going down further, but there is still a moderated world trade picture. Demand in the advanced economies is not really all that attractive. So, global trade doesn’t see possibilities of great recovery sooner,” she added.
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