Responding to Middle East crises and rising oil prices, the United Nations has lowered its forecast for global economic growth and raised the prospects for inflation this year.
Global GDP growth is now forecast at 2.5 per cent for 2026, down from 2.7 per cent in January, and UN economists said it could fall to only 2.1 per cent "in a more adverse scenario".
That would be one of the weakest growth rates this century, outside of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global financial crisis of 2008, Shantanu Mukherjee, director of economic analysis in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Global inflation is projected to rise to 3.9 per cent in 2026, 0.8 per cent higher than forecast in January, before the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran.
