Cebr refreshes world economic forecasts

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) has published its World Economics League table for 2016 with key forecasts as follows:

• Slower Chinese GDP growth and a weaker currency mean that China is now forecast to overtake the US in 2029 compared with 2025 in last year’s forecasts.

• Japan has the weakest forecast growth of all major economies and is likely to be overtaken by both the UK and Germany during the 2030s.

• Germany’s population is likely to be over a million larger than assumed last year because of migration, from Syria especially. As a result, its GDP is no longer likely to be overtaken by the UK by 2030, although Cebr still expects this to happen during the following decade.

• India is now starting to catch up with China and will eventually overtake in the second half of the century.

• Korea is overtaking most of the European countries and will be one of the world’s top 5 economies at some point in the 2030s.

• Some of the weaker European economies like France and Italy are slipping way down the table. They face exclusion from bodies like the G-8 and possibly eventually the G-20 as their economies persistently underperform.

• Russia has performed even worse than assumed and is likely to face a persistent decline down the league table and also face exclusion from the G-8.

• Oil and commodities based economies are forecast to do worse than previously expected, though forecasts have been prepared on the assumption that the oil price will revert to $60-70 during 2016 as the world economy recovers and the demand for oil revives.

• The world’s fastest growing region over the next 15 years is likely to be Central Asia. Its share of the global economy is forecast to have more than tripled since the start of the new millennium, from 2.8% in 2000 to 9.9% in 2030. The world’s slowest-growing region is likely to be Western Europe, with its share of the global economy falling by 42% over the same period. Several of its economies are expected to drop out of the world’s top 8 and top 20 economies which form the basis of the G-8 and G-20 clubs.

• According to Cebr, by 2030, Belarus, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Ethiopia will enter the top 60 world economies for the first time in the modern era.