Global growth set for slowest pace since 2008 as trade tensions rise - World Bank

ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN

- SIPHELELE DLUDLA

THE World Bank has warned of economic slowdown as heightened trade tensions and a cloud of policy uncertainty loom over the global economy.

The World Bank's latest Global Economic Prospects report released on Tuesday projected growth to reach its slowest pace since 2008, excluding outright global recessions.

The report highlights a striking trend: growth forecasts have been downgraded in nearly 70% of economies worldwide, spanning all regions and income categories.

The World Bank estimated global growth will decelerate to 2.3% in 2025, a figure that falls short of expectations set just at the beginning of the year.

While a global recession is not on the horizon, the World Bank said if current forecasts materialised, the average global growth throughout the first seven years of the 2020s will be the most sluggish of any decade since the 1960s.

Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group's chief economist and senior vice president for development economics, underscored the seriousness of the situation.

"Outside of Asia, the developing world is becoming a development-free zone. It has been advertising itself for more than a decade," Gill said.