Tunisia’s economy is expected to grow 3% in 2021, 3.3% in 2022 and 2.1% in 2026, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its World Economic Outlook Report, released Tuesday.
The global growth forecast for 2021 has been revised down slightly (-0.1%) to 5.9%, and remains unchanged for 2022, at 4.9% compared to the July 2021 forecast.
For advanced economies, the IMF projects a growth of 5.2% in 2021 (down 0.4% from the July 2021 forecast) and 4.5% for 2022 (up 0.1%).
For the emerging market and developing economy group, the growth outlook has been revised up by 0.1% to 6.4% for 2021 and down by 0.1% to 5.1% for 2022.
According to the IMF, however, the modest headline revision, however, masks large downgrades for some countries. The outlook for the low-income developing country group has darkened considerably due to worsening pandemic dynamics.
The downgrade also reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group, in part due to supply disruptions.
Partially offsetting these changes, projections for some commodity exporters have been upgraded on the back of rising commodity prices.
Pandemic-related disruptions to contact-intensive sectors have caused the labor market recovery to significantly lag the output recovery in most countries.
The IMF emphasizes that the dangerous divergence in economic prospects across countries remains a major concern.
Aggregate output for the advanced economy group is expected to regain its pre-pandemic trend path in 2022 and exceed it by 0.9 percent in 2024.
By contrast, aggregate output for the emerging market and developing economy group (excluding China) is expected to remain 5.5 percent below the pre-pandemic forecast in 2024, resulting in a larger setback to improvements in their living standards.
These differences are a consequence of large disparities in vaccine access and in policy support.
While almost 60 percent of the population in advanced economies are fully vaccinated and some are now receiving booster shots, about 96 percent of the population in low-income countries remain unvaccinated, the IMF report says.
