According to the International Monetary Fund’s April 2025 World Economic Outlook (WEO) report, world economic growth is expected to drop from an estimated 3.3% in 2024 to 2.8% in 2025 before rebounding to 3.0% in 2026 and 3.1% by the year 2030. The 2025 and 2026 expected figures pale in comparison with the 3.3% projected world economic growth for the years 2025 & 2026 in the January 2025 WEO update. This cumulative 0.8 percentage point drop compared to January’s version of the report comes as a result of the global shock caused by the U.S. tariff measures which raised the U.S. effective tariff rates to their highest levels in over a century and the tariff counter measures that ensued thereafter. The IMF commented that a further escalation of the trade war along with the accompanying trade policy uncertainty would further cut short-term and long-term growth and weaken resilience to any future shocks. Always in the same vein, the IMF commented that the extent of the shock makes it very difficult to set the underlying assumptions for the projections, and accordingly the presented figures represent a “reference forecast” based on information available as of April 4, 2025. The IMF projected the U.S.A. and China to suffer the most from this escalation, with the former’s 2025 projected growth being slashed by 0.9 percentage points compared to the January 2025 update, and China’s projected growth lowered by 0.6 percentage points, while the effect on the Euro Area (0.2 percentage point reduction) is expected to be softer. Delving further into details, the IMF estimated economic growth rate at 2.8% in the United States in 2024, 0.9% in the Euro area, 1.1% in the United Kingdom, and 0.1% in Japan, with the economic growth for emerging markets and developing economies attaining 4.3%. In this vein, the report projected economic growth in 2025 to stand at 1.8% for the United States, 0.8% for the Euro area, 1.1% for the UK, 0.6% for Japan and 3.7% for emerging markets and developing economies. In parallel, the report pinpointed that the downward trajectory of global inflation is expected to slow, with headline inflation dropping from 5.3% in 2024 to an expected 4.3% in 2025 and 3.6% in 2026.

On the regional front, the WEO report estimated economic growth to have reached 2.4% in 2024 for the Middle East & Central Asia (MECA) region, projecting a growth of 3.0% in 2025 and 3.5% in 2026. Growth forecasts for the MECA region were revised from 3.6% for the year 2025 and 3.9% for the year 2026 in the IMF’s January 2025 WEO update report.

Locally, the IMF estimated Lebanon’s economy to have contracted by 7.5% in 2024, following a contraction of 0.7% in 2023 and growth rates of 1.0% in 2022 and 2.0% in 2021 while also expecting the size of the GDP at current prices to have reached $28.28 billion in 2024 compared to $50.93 billion in 2019 at the onset of the country’s financial crisis. The IMF did not provide growth estimates for Lebanon beyond the year 2024 citing the “unusually high degree of uncertainty” surrounding the outlook of the Lebanese economy. The IMF also commented that Lebanon’s inflation decelerated to 45.2% in 2024 down from 221.3% in 2023 and 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 contracted to 18.2% in 2024 compared to 23.9% in 2023, 29.4% in 2022, 23.0% in the year 2021 and 11.1% in the year 2020.