TEHRAN - The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its latest World Economic Outlook report titled “War sets back global recovery”, has revised up its projection of Iran’s real gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 to three percent from its previous report in which the figure was two percent.

The increase in Iran’s economic growth comes as the entity has modified its forecasts of the global economic growth from 4.4 percent in its previous report published in January to 3.6 percent; the fund expects the global economy to follow the same modest growth and settle at 3.6 percent in 2023, as well.

The IMF’s new report reflects a small-paced economic growth for advanced economies due to a combination of war and pandemic, while for low-income developing countries the growth is even less largely due to the pandemic.

“The outlook for the low-income developing country group has darkened considerably due to worsening pandemic dynamics. The downgrade also reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group,” IMF stated.

“The global recovery continues but the momentum has weakened, hobbled by the pandemic. Fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant, the recorded global COVID-19 death toll has risen close to five million and health risks abound, holding back a full return to normalcy. Pandemic outbreaks in critical links of global supply chains have resulted in longer-than-expected supply disruptions, further feeding inflation in many countries. Overall, risks to economic prospects have increased, and policy trade-offs have become more complex.,” the report read.

IMF has predicted West Asia’s GDP to grow by 4.1 percent in the current year, with no change from the fund’s previous report.

The international body sees Iran’s inflation (consumer price changes) at 27.5 percent in 2022, decreasing 11.8 percent from 39.3 percent in 2021.

As reported, the country’s account balance which was – 0.1 percent of the country’s GDP in 2020 is expected to climb to one percent in 2022.

Based on the IMF data, despite the sanctions and the negative impact of the pandemic, the Iranian economy is going to outperform many countries both in the region and across the world.

EF/MA