Facebook chat on mid-year WESP 2014 update

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On 12 June, economists from the Global Economic Monitoring Unit of UN DESA’s Division for Development Policy and Analysis (DPAD) will be ready to answer online questions on the world economy in a Facebook chat taking place at 10-11 am EDT on Facebook http://bit.ly/AskWESP2014.

The online community will be able to discuss the latest updates on global growth and the risks and uncertainties facing the world economy, which were identified in the mid-year update of the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2014 released on 21 May.  

“We have revised downward our growth projections mainly for a number of developing countries and economies in transition, based on a few key developments in the world in early 2014, after we released the previous forecasts in WESP 2014,” says Pingfan Hong, Acting Director of DPAD, outlining some of the main events behind these revised projections.

“The longer and colder winter in North America has significantly impeded economic activities in the US, with some spillovers to the rest of the world,” he explains. “The escalation of the political crisis in Ukraine and the associated geopolitical tensions […] and the financial turbulence in early 2014, related to the US Federal Reserve tapering of the quantitative easing, had been to a large extent discounted in our previous forecast, but the subsequent impact on the growth of a few emerging economies was larger than we anticipated. Nevertheless, at the global level, the revision is very small, only one to two tenth of one percentage point for global output,” Pingfan Hong adds.  

Growth of world gross product (WGP) is now projected at 2.8 per cent in 2014 and 3.2 per cent in 2015, up from 2.2 per cent in 2013. However, this pace of expansion is still low compared to the growth path before the 2008 global financial crisis. The recovery in the developed economies will continue, but the growth prospects for the developing economies and the economies in transition have been revised downward, largely because of challenging economic and/or political conditions in a number of countries in these two latter groups.

“Our team of economists are looking forward to engaging with the online audience and to answer any question they may have on the world economy and the trends presented in our report”, concludes Pingfan Hong, encouraging the online community to post questions at http://bit.ly/AskWESP2014 or on Twitter to @UNDevelopPolicy using the hashtag #AskWESP2014.

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