Raphael John-Lall

T&T, Be­lize, St Lu­cia and Grena­da will all reg­is­ter a growth of three or just over three per cent this year ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s (IMF) lat­est World Eco­nom­ic Out­look, re­leased yes­ter­day.

T&T’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) will grow by 3.2 per cent in 2023. In its re­port, the Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion said that the glob­al econ­o­my’s grad­ual re­cov­ery from both the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic and Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine re­mains on track.

Ac­cord­ing to the IMF, Guyana, which is now recog­nised as an oil-pro­duc­ing coun­try, fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the com­mod­i­ty a few years ago, will record eco­nom­ic growth of 37.2 per cent this year, in­creas­ing to 45.3 per cent next year.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, which is the Cari­com coun­try with the sec­ond high­est pre­dict­ed eco­nom­ic growth of six per cent this year, will reg­is­ter a five per cent growth in 2024.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da with a growth of 5.5 per cent this year, will see that fig­ure de­cline slight­ly to 5.4 per cent next year, while Do­mini­ca and Bar­ba­dos are pro­ject­ed to record eco­nom­ic growth of 4.9 per cent this year, drop­ping to 4.7 and 3.9 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly, in 2024.

The twin is­land Fed­er­a­tion of St Kitts-Nevis will, ac­cord­ing to the IMF pro­jec­tions, record eco­nom­ic growth of 4.5 per cent this year, drop­ping to 3.8 per cent the fol­low­ing year, while the Ba­hamas’ eco­nom­ic growth this year is pro­ject­ed at 4.3 per cent de­clin­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to 1.8 per cent next year.

Com­ment­ing on the glob­al econ­o­my, the re­port said Chi­na’s re­opened econ­o­my is re­bound­ing strong­ly and that sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions are un­wind­ing, while dis­lo­ca­tions to en­er­gy and food mar­kets caused by the war are re­ced­ing.

“Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the mas­sive and syn­chro­nised tight­en­ing of mon­e­tary pol­i­cy by most cen­tral banks should start to bear fruit, with in­fla­tion mov­ing back to­wards tar­gets,” the IMF said.

In the de­vel­op­ing world, the IMF down­grad­ed growth prospects for In­dia, Latin Amer­i­ca, the Mid­dle East, Sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa and the less-de­vel­oped coun­tries of Eu­rope. Ukraine’s war-rav­aged econ­o­my is fore­cast to shrink by 3.0 per cent.