A key economic report says the global economy will be worse than first
estimated this year, while a separate study says 2010 will be better
than expected.
Thursday's World Bank study says the global
economy will shrink almost three percent this year, which is
significantly worse than earlier estimates.
Bank experts say the
downturn is likely to hit poor nations hard, even though financial
markets in wealthy nations are stabilizing.
At the same time, news reports say the International Monetary Fund is raising its estimate of global economic growth for 2010.
The
reports on Bloomberg and Reuters quote unnamed sources saying the IMF
is raising next year's growth prediction to hit 2.4 percent. That is a
half a percent higher than earlier studies predicted.
The predictions come just ahead of a meeting of G8 finance ministers in Italy where the economic crisis tops the agenda.
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
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