Washington-January 15, 2023

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva,

warned that the current year 2023 will be more difficult for the global economy than last year, and predicted that a third of the world economy will enter a recession.

In an interview with CBS, Georgieva said: "Why?" Because the three big economies, the United States, the European Union and China, are all slowing down simultaneously,"he said.

"We expect a third of the global economy to be in recession," she added, explaining that even for countries that are not in recession, "hundreds of millions of people will feel the recession".

She continued by saying that while the United States may end up avoiding a recession, the situation looks even darker in Europe, which has been hit hard by the war in Ukraine, warning that half of the European Union may enter a recession.

The International Monetary Fund expects global growth to reach 2.7% this year, down from 3.2% in 2022.

The slowdown in China will have a severe impact globally, as the world's second largest economy declined significantly in 2022, due to Beijing's strict "zero covid" policy, which made China lag behind the rest of the world, disrupting supply chains and harming the flow of trade and investment.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping said at the end of last week that he expects the Chinese economy to grow by at least 4.4% in 2022, a much stronger figure than many economists expected, but much lower than the growth rate of 8.4% in 2021.

Beijing abandoned coronavirus restrictions in early December, and while the reopening of the country may provide some much-needed support to the global economy, the recovery will be erratic and painful.

The haphazard reopening in China has unleashed a wave of Corona cases that have overwhelmed the healthcare system, reducing consumption and production in the process.

The next two months will be "difficult for China, the impact on Chinese growth will be negative," Georgieva said, adding that she expects the country to gradually move to "a higher level of economic performance, and finish the year better than it started".