Downing Street Says » IMF Forecast

» Wednesday, March 18, 2009

IMF Forecast

Asked whether the Prime Minister agreed with the latest IMF forecasts, the PMS said that there seemed to have been quite a lot of forecasts from the IMF recently and they appeared to have changed their view on Japan for instance and revised them down from 2.6% to 5% in the space of four or five weeks. So clearly all forecasts were very fluid at the moment. The IMF forecasts appeared to be particularly fluid, not just for the UK, but also for many other countries.

It was important to focus on what was actually happening and if you looked at the outcomes from the data so far, of course Britain was being hit by this global downturn in the way that every other country was. However, the latest data showed that the reductions in national income had been greater in the US, Germany, Italy and Japan. So, far from previously suggested, though now no longer suggested by the IMF forecast, that the UK was worst affected by the downturn, the out-turn data suggested that that was not the case.

Asked if he rejected the suggestion that the recession here would be longer, the PMS said that we would publish our forecast at the time of the Budget. We were not going to publish forecasts every four or five weeks or so. If you looked at what had actually happened to date, Britain was of course being affected; we had a large financial sector and it was being hardest hit, but our out-turns were in the middle of the pack in terms of the other G7 economies.

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