Washington, Mustafa Sakr

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued its World Economic Outlook (WEO) reports on Tuesday predicting a 3.1% growth in emerging markets in the next two years, compared to 2.5% in 2015.

The report predicted a global economic growth of 3.3% during 2016. However, in January this fell by 0.2%.

The IMF previously projected potential economic growth in the United States at 2.6% in January, but decreased to 2.4% for the current year in the most recent report.

“In Egypt, an oil-importing country, growth being expected to decrease to 3.3% in 2016 compared to 4% in 2015,”.

Consumer prices in Egypt are projected to rise by 10.7% in 2016, compared to 11% in 2015.

Furthermore, the current account balance in Egypt is expected to increase to 5.3% of GDP in 2016 and 2017, compared to 3.7% in the current year.

Inflation in Egypt was 11% in 2015 and the IMF expects it will decrease to 9.6% and 9.5% in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

The IMF expects that Iraq’s current account balance, which was 0.8% of GDP in 2015, will rise to 1.2% in 2016 and then 0% in 2020.

The IMF expects a slight rise in unemployment rate in Egypt, up to 13% in 2016 compared to 12.9% in 2015, and it is expected to reach 12.4% in 2017.