In the world there is a high level of concern for a possible global recession led by the United States. In this sense, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an adjustment to its forecasts on the economic performance of the planet for 2022 and 2023. Among its forecasts, Colombia once again stood out.
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The international organization reported that Colombia’s GDP would not grow this year by 5.8% as it had indicated in April. Now anticipate that it will do so at a rate of 6.3%.
This implies more than double the dynamics that will have Latin America and the Caribbean, which is 3%, of the world which is 3.2%, the euro zone (2.6%), the United States (2.4%) and 3 percentage points higher than expected for China, many of whom had their forecast cut.
Even the IMF clarified that the GDP of the United States will grow only 2.3%. That is, 1.4 percentage points less than the forecasts for April this year.
Analysts are not very optimistic about the direction of the world’s main economy, weighed down by excessive inflation (9.1 percent in June) and a central bank (Federal Reserve) applying a drastic hike in your interest rates seeking to tackle a variation in the cost of living for Americans that was not seen for more than four decades.
In fact, the Federal Reserve recently announced its fourth rate hike with another 0.75 percentage points, taking them to a level between 2.25 and 2.50 percent. This trend seems to continue if inflation in the United States continues to skyrocket, increasing analysts’ and markets’ fears of a recession.
Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Fed, at the end of the two-day meeting, suggested that the Fed would not hesitate to decree an even higher rate hike than the one announced yesterday if the increase in consumer prices does not let up.
The senior official also declared that this could lead to a period of “below trend” economic growth, although he ruled out that the rate adjustment policy could lead to a recession in his country.
“I don’t think the US economy is likely to be in a recession right now”, Powell said in his usual press conference.
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What is the reason for the Colombian rebound?
Analysts consulted by El Tiempo believe that the country’s economic rebound is due to a lag in the Colombian economy that will be reversed in the second half of the year and will directly impact GDP.
For Felipe Campos, manager of Economic Studies of Grupo Alianza, there are four factors that would explain this situation. The first, that the process of rising inflation and rising interest rates was much later (end of 2021) than that of the rest of the world; the second, a high public spending that was maintained, while in other economies it decreased a while ago; a third factor is the strength of oil and as a fourth point the gasoline subsidy that represents between 2 and 3 points of GDP, resources that the Government could have allocated to reduce its fiscal deficit.
Now, for Andrés Langebaek Rueda, Executive Director of Economic Studies of Grupo Bolívar, he estimates that the Colombian economy could have grown 12.5 percent annually in the second quarterprecisely, due to a statistical effect of calculating the current dynamics against a much less productive period like last year, resulting in very high growth in 2022.
“We think that the Colombian economy reached its peak in the second quarter of 2022 and what is coming now is a more or less strong deceleration process with 3 percent for the fourth quarter of the year“, said.
The IMF forecasts that the Colombian GDP will grow next year about 3.5 percent.
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