South Economics Media correspondent Margarita Nansha.
“The global debt and financial risks are of concern to central banks of major developed economies or to maintain a high interest rate environment for a longer period.” On 28 October, the Co-Chair of the International Finance Forum and former Central Bank President Zhou Xiaochuan noted at the annual global meeting on the twentieth anniversary of the International Finance Forum (IFF) that international trade and investment were currently growing at a much slower pace, with slow and uneven global economic recovery and increased uncertainty as a result of a combination of risks such as unilateralism, geopolitical, military conflict, inflation, international debt and industrial chain restructuring.
Zhou Xiaochuan mentioned that the latest report issued by the IMF in October indicated that global economic growth was expected to slow from 3.5 per cent in 2022 to 3.0 per cent in 2023 and 2.9 per cent in 2024, well below the average of 3.8 per cent for the period 2000-2019. As for the rate of increase in global economic indicators in 2024, other international agencies are also expected to be relatively low, with WTO predicting 2.5 per cent and OECD predicting 2.7 per cent. At the same time, while the global rate of inflation has slowed, core inflation remains more adhesive and declining slowly. The IMF predicts that global inflation will fall from 8.7% in 2022 to 6.8% this year, but inflation in most countries will not reach the central bank target until at least 2025.
“We need to learn to use the `gold key' of peace, development, cooperation and win-winness to solve the current set of problems facing the world economy, international trade and investment.” Zhou Xiaochuan said that, in the face of economic challenges, countries should strengthen their coordination and cooperation in dealing with them, and should adhere to the right direction of globalization, safeguard multilateralism and avoid “stitching” walls and economic coercion. An open world economy was to be built against protectionism and to avoid the misuse of national security arguments to restrict trade and investment. The reform of the World Trade Organization should be actively pursued, making full use of regional cooperation mechanisms and new trends in regional economic integration, and should actively promote free trade and investment. There was a need to strengthen the coordination of national macroeconomic, financial and regulatory policies and to avoid new imbalances caused by unilateralism and unilateral sanctions. In particular, the severe impact on developing countries of the spillover effects of austerity policies in developed economies should be managed. There is a need to focus on practical cooperation in many areas, particularly in such important areas as the digital economy, climate change, green development and supply chains, and to introduce new dynamics into the world economy.
Zhou Xiaochuan stated that, over the past 20 years, the IFF had taken the initiative of playing its role as a permanent mechanism for international dialogue, actively promoting communication and exchange on key issues of global economic finance, and had played its unique role in fostering international financial community exchanges and cooperation to help the world economy achieve sustainable development.