Georgieva, in her first major interview since Trump took office, underscored the challenges facing a global economy that is still posting underwhelming growth after scarring from the Covid-19 pandemic, but cautioned against being overly alarmed.
The IMF will likely lower the economic outlook slightly in its next World Economic Outlook (WEO) update in about three weeks, but “we don’t see recession on the horizon”, she said in a Reuters interview.
“What we see in the high-frequency indicators is indeed indicating that consumer confidence, investor confidence are weakening somewhat, and we know that that then translates into an impact on growth prospects,” she added.
But the IMF was not yet seeing “a dramatic impact” from the tariffs implemented and threatened so far by Trump since his return to the White House, she said.
The IMF in January nudged up its global economic growth estimate for 2025 to 3.3 percent from 3.2 percent in its previous estimate in October 2024, with a half-percentage point upgrade to the US outlook to 2.7 percent accounting for most of that uptick.