UN forecasts world economic growth of 2.3% in 2023

Global economic growth is projected to be 2.3 percent in 2023, up 0.4 percentage points from a January forecast, and the prediction for 2024 has dropped 0.2 percentage points to 2.5 percent, according to a UN report released on Tuesday.

“Despite this uptick, the growth rate is still well below the average growth rate in the two decades before the pandemic of 3.1 percent,” said the World Economic Situation and Prospects report issued by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The UN forecasts are less than the International Monetary Fund, which said earlier this year that global growth would fall to 2.9 percent in 2023 from 3.4 percent in 2022 and for 2024 would pick up slightly to 3.1 percent.

The UN said while the outlook for the US, EU and China had improved, “for many developing countries, growth prospects have deteriorated amid tightening credit conditions and rising costs of external financing.”

“The least developed countries are forecast to grow by 4.1 percent in 2023 and 5.2 percent in 2024, far below the 7 percent growth target set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” the UN report said.