International Monetary Fund

Earlier, in July, it had projected a growth of 7.4 per cent for India in the current financial year. Reasons like contraction in US economy in the first half of 2022, a fall in Euro, lockdowns in China and continued Coronavirus outbreaks, have been listed by IMF for trimming India's growth projection.

"The worst is yet to come", the global financial institution's World Economic Outlook report said, Sky News reported. "For many people, 2023 will feel like a recession", it said. A downward revision of the global growth rate for 2023, from the amount the IMF said it expected in July, has been made in the report, Sky News reported.

The country's central bank said that the fall in foreign exchange reserves was due to external debt and other paymentWhile latest data published by the State Bank of Pakistan revealed that the much required reserves are still above the $8 billion mark, the worry for policymakers is that they have started to deplete. In January, this year, the reserves held by SBP was more than $16 billion.

"High food and fuel prices could prompt social protest and instability," The News quoted the IMF as saying in an executive summary of the seventh and eighth reviews, released under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF). The report said that risks to the outlook and programme implementation remain high and tilted to the downside given the very complex domestic and external environment.

According to the details of the estimates done by the IMF for Pakistan, the country's "economy will grow to around 3.5 per cent but the average inflation rate is estimated at about 19.9 per cent", in projections that were made before the floods destroyed at least one-third of the country and impacted massively on economic standing.

The IMF mission led by Peter Breuer and Masahiro Nozaki who were in the island nation from August 24 to September 1. They extensively discussed IMF's support for Sri Lanka and the authorities' comprehensive economic reform programme. "The new EFF arrangement will support Sri Lanka's program to restore macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability, while safeguarding financial stability, reducing corruption vulnerabilities and unlocking Sri Lanka's growth potential," the IMF announced in a statement.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday slashed its annual growth projection for India by 0.8 percentage points to 7.4 per cent for 2022 and forecast "increasingly gloomy developments" for the global economy such as high inflation, downturn in China because of Covid. and spillovers from the war in Ukraine.

The Washington-based IMF said it now expected the global economy to grow by 3.2 per cent in 2022 -- a 0.4 point reduction since April -- while inflation is now believed to be higher than the previous forecasts. The slowdown is predicted to continue next year, when growth is now forecast to be 2.9 per cent -- 0.7 points lower than had been pencilled in three months ago, The Guardian reported.

Amid speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin will keep the Nord Stream 1 pipeline closed when routine annual maintenance ends later this week, the IMF said Europe lacked a comprehensive plan to cope with shortages, further increases in energy prices and the impact on growth, The Guardian reported. The Washington-based fund identified Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as the three EU countries likely to suffer most, but said that Italy, Germany and Austria would also suffer significant effects, the report said.

In a latest, the government has pitched the budget deficit target of 4.8 per cent of the country's total economic size to the IMF for the next fiscal year. The pitch is part of the proposed economic remedies and policy changes, demanded by the IMF and global lenders to Pakistan, which include further adjustment through a combination of expenditure cuts and additional revenue mobilisation.