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IMF, World Bank meetings show limits in mitigating shocks
Leaders warned of recession risks and supply disruptions as they also launched a fertilizer access initiative for farmers facing higher costs.
- The International Monetary Fund and World Bank pledged up to $150 billion in new financing assistance for developing countries on Friday, marking re-engagement with Venezuela's acting government after a seven-year pause.
- Successive geopolitical shocks, including energy and fertilizer price spikes from the Middle East crisis, have scrambled planning for developing economies. Lesotho Minister of Finance and Development Planning Retselisitsoe Adelaide Matlanyane said tensions have "brought on a sense that we have to rethink policy and we have to think differently."
- The IMF released a mild growth forecast cut to 3.1% for 2026, though officials noted the outlook was already outdated as the global economy drifts toward a more adverse 2.5% scenario.
- French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters the Strait of Hormuz must reopen, yet cautioned, "I don't want to pay a dollar to go through the Strait of Hormuz," reflecting anxiety over supply costs.
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched an initiative Friday urging Group of Twenty countries to coordinate on fertilizer access, yet officials concede global finance institutions face limited capacity to fully mitigate damage from frequent geopolitical shocks.
9 Articles
9 Articles
IMF and World Bank meetings show limits in managing global shocks amid U.S.-Iran conflict
Washington: Global finance leaders, buffeted by constant news from the U.S.-Iran conflict, confronted this past week their limited ability to mitigate the economic damage caused by increasingly frequent geopolitical shocks. They also acknowledged that reliance on US leadership to resolve crises is no longer the certainty it once was.At the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, participants swung between gloom …
This week, the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were held in Washington, D.C., with an unusually gloomy backdrop. The most relevant fact is the cut in the Fund’s expectation of global growth from 3.4% projected in January to 3.1%. The reason is clear: since the end of February the conflict – or the multiple conflicts – in the Middle East has generated negative supply shocks in energy markets and global supply…
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