The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its new estimates for the global economy on Tuesday. Attention is mainly focused on the extent to which the sharply increased inflation of recent times weighs on the strength of the recovery from the corona crisis.

The fund recently warned that high inflation could be a barrier to accelerating global growth. Poorer countries and households, in particular, are suffering from rising food and energy prices, it said. At the time, the organization also announced that growth expectations for the global economy would be somewhat weakened. It is now known exactly how this will work out in the figures.

In July, the IMF forecast global growth of 6 percent this year, followed by a 4.9 percent increase in 2022. At that time, the outlook had improved, especially for richer countries. However, for many developing countries, the picture was actually bleaker than it seemed earlier this year.

According to IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath, the revisions reflected differences in vaccination coverage. In developed economies, a much larger part of the population had already had all the shots by then, while poorer countries seemed much less resilient to the new virus variants.

This week the IMF and the World Bank are holding their major annual meetings in Washington. Unfortunately, due to the corona pandemic, some of these summits are via video connections. But dignitaries also travel to the American capital.