Financial Risk Manager

Ways of Financial and Risk Management

UN predicts zero world growth in 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009

United Nations has downgraded its forecast for this year after a worse-than-expected economic performance during the fourth quarter of 2008. The world economy is heading for zero growth in 2009 and predicting and showing;

Deepening recession in rich countries
Slow the sale of consumer goods and raw materials from developing nations.
The U.S. economy could shrink by as much as 1.9 percent
Euro-zone economies will contract by up to 1.5 percent
Japan is expected to see negative growth of between 0.3 and 0.6 percent
Mexico appears likely to tip into the red zone as well, with a contraction of 1.2 percent
China's growth predicted to slow to 7 percent and India's to around 6 percent
The world's poorest economies will grow by less than 5 percent
Consumers in European countries are saddled with huge foreign currency loans
Debtors in those countries are finding it hard to repay mortgages and borrowings

Some of the suggestions to make over all this crises are;

Countries are required to put together massive economic stimulus packages.
Governments in Japan, Germany and China in particular have room to maneuver and should do so sooner rather than later.
The reduction of debt in the private sector has to be compensated by a huge amount of public debt, at least temporarily, if we want to stabilize the global economy.

Ref: United Nations Geneva (Associated Press) by Frank Jordan

Labels: Economy and Business