(Washington) The long-term growth of the world economy is expected to average 2.2% by 2030, according to a report published Monday by the World Bank (WB), which would make this decade the the weakest growth since the beginning of the century.
This decline in growth should concern the most advanced countries as much as the developing and emerging countries, starting with China, specifies the WB in its report.
“China has played a pulling role in global growth for a long time, but that is changing as its growth is slowly slowing down. The question now is who will replace China in this role, and we believe that this should not come from a single country, but from a group of countries,” said the institution’s chief economist, Indermit Gill, during a press conference call.
Among the causes of the slowdown in global potential growth, the WB identifies the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in its impact on the education of children and adolescents and the long-term effect that this will have on the economy, as well as the war in Ukraine and the disruption of trade that it entails.
“ Education is an important element of growth, not only in terms of employee productivity, but also in integration into the labor force: the more people are educated, the longer they stay in this bracket ”, detailed to the press Franziska Ohnsorge, economist in charge of the report.
The WB also stresses that the impact on growth of the delay in terms of education caused by the pandemic “will go well beyond the horizon set by this report”.
Nevertheless, the institution estimates that global potential growth can be improved by 0.7 percentage point on average if all countries carry out a series of reforms in this direction.
This concerns in particular investment, which has also been falling since the pandemic, as well as women’s access to the labor market and the improvement of the conditions of access to world trade.
The WB is also optimistic about the risk of fragmentation of the global economy, believing that “it is not certain that this will happen”.
“The fact that China exports less, for example, is linked to an increase in its domestic consumption, which is a good thing, not proof of fragmentation. If you look at services, you see an increase in their share in world trade, which is also a good thing,” said Indermit Gill.
