According to the International Monetary Fund’s October 2024 World Economic Outlook (WEO) report, global growth is expected to remain stable at 3.2% in each of 2024 and 2025 and to slow to 3.1% by the year 2029. Said expected figures are practically unchanged from the July 2024 WEO Update and the April 2024 WEO report. According to the report, the past four years saw a multitude of shocks (namely the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and extreme weather events) that led to disruptions in supply chains, caused energy & food crises, and pressed governments to take unprecedented actions to protect lives & livelihoods. Overall, the report noted that the global economy has demonstrated resilience, yet showed uneven performance across regions. In figures, the report unveiled that the global economy grew by 3.3% in 2023, compared to growth rates of 3.6% in 2022 and 6.6% in 2021 and to a contraction of 2.7% in 2020. Delving further into details, the IMF reported economic growth of 2.9% in the United States in 2023, 0.4% in the Euro area, 0.3% in the United Kingdom, and 1.7% in Japan, with the economic growth for emerging markets and developing economies attaining 4.4%. In this vein, the report projected economic growth in 2024 to stand at 2.8% for the United States, 0.8% for the Euro area, 1.1% for the UK, 0.3% for Japan and 4.2% for emerging markets and developing economies. In parallel, the report pointed out that global inflation has been on a downward trajectory, with headline inflation dropping from 5.7% in 2023 to 5.3% in 2024 and to an expected 3.5% in 2025.

On the regional front, the WEO report estimated economic growth to have reached 2.1% in 2023 for the Middle East & Central Asia (MECA) region, projecting a growth of 2.4% in 2024 and 3.9% in 2024. Growth forecasts for the MECA region were revised from 2.4% for the year 2024 and 4.0% for the year 2025 in the IMF’s July 2024 WEO update.

Locally, the IMF estimated Lebanon’s economy to have contracted by 0.7% in 2023, following growth rates of 1.0% in 2022 and 2.0% in 2021 and a contraction of 24.6% in 2020. The IMF did not provide growth estimates for Lebanon beyond the year 2023 citing the “unusually high degree of uncertainty” surrounding the outlook of the Lebanese economy. The IMF also pointed out that Lebanon’s inflation accelerated to 221.3% in 2023 up from 171.2%, 154.8%, and 84.9% in the years 2022, 2021, and 2020 on a respective basis. It also estimated the country’s current account deficit to GDP ratio to have settled at 23.5% in 2023, in comparison with 27.7% in 2022, 18.1% in the year 2021 and 15.8% in the year 2020.