The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected the nation’s economy to grow from 2.9 percent in 2023 to 3.1 percent in 2024.
IMF disclosed this in its new global economic growth forecast on Tuesday.
The Fund also said that Sub-Sahara Africa’s economy would grow from 3.3 percent in 2023 to 4 percent in 2024.
It said, the Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth would shrink for a second year in a row in 2023 before rebounding in 2024.
The Fund said, growth in the region is expected to fall to 3.3 percent this year from 4 percent last year, before rebounding to 4 percent in 2024.
The figure is slightly lower than the 3.5 percent for 2023 and 4.1 percent for 2024 projected by the IMF in July.
IMF said, Kenya’s growth would accelerate to 5 percent this year, from 4.8 per cent in 2022, despite its government cutting budgets amid soaring debt costs.
Tanzania and Senegal are also set to see higher growth this year. Annual inflation across the region, which has seen violent protests against the cost of living in countries including Ghana and Kenya, is expected to be 16.2% at the end of this year.
That would be the same as 12 months earlier, the IMF said, before it falls to 10.5% at the end of next year.
The global economy continues to recover from the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis.
In retrospect, the resilience has been remarkable. Despite war-disrupted energy and food markets and unprecedented monetary tightening to combat decades-high inflation, economic activity has slowed but not stalled.
It said “Even so, growth remains slow and uneven, with widening divergences. The global economy is limping along, not sprinting.According to our latest projections, world economic growth will slow from 3.5 percent in 2022 to 3 percent this year and 2.9 percent next year, a 0.1 percentage point downgrade for 2024 from July.
“This remains well below the historical average. Headline inflation continues to decelerate, from 9.2 percent in 2022 on a year-over-year basis, to 5.9 percent this year and 4.8 percent in 2024. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, is also projected to decline, albeit more gradually, to 4.5 percent next year. Most countries aren’t likely to return inflation to target until 2025.
“As a result, projections are increasingly consistent with a soft landing scenario, bringing inflation down without a major downturn in activity, especially in the United States, where our forecast increase in unemployment is now modest, from 3.6 percent to 3.9 percent by 2025”, the Fund said.
